ght into place with a
natural grace that it seemed a pity to waste on three spinster aunts and
two dogs, and the same note of color was repeated in another rebellious
blossom at the throat. The young face was plump and oval, and the cheeks
were pink, the brown eyes were wide and sparkling and--Oh, well, the
young man in the pool stopped cataloguing her attractions and simply
summed her up as a stunningly pretty girl. Then he tried once more to
get rid of that maddening mosquito and wished to high Heaven that they
would go!

"When our dear mother died we four girls were all quite young," began
Aunt Matilda, pausing primly to smooth down her skirts, and the young
man in the watery prison gave up in despair. She was starting out like
the old-fashioned story books, which never arrived any place, and never
knew how to get back if they did. "Your Aunt Sarah was eighteen years
old, your Aunt Ann and myself sixteen, and your poor, deluded mother
fourteen. Our father, child, married again within the year, and so you
see our acquaintance with the duplicity of men began at a very early
age. Of course, we refused to live with a stepmother or to allow her to
occupy our own dear mother's house. Left, then, upon our own
responsibilities at so tender a period of our lives, it behooved us to
conduct ourselves with the strictest of propriety, and I am most happy
to say that we came triumphantly through the ordeal. Naturally, we being
great beauties in those days, my child, great beauties, many gay young
men fluttered about us, and some of them really made quite favorable
impressions upon us. There was one in particular--"

Aunt Matilda paused for a sigh and fixed her eyes in sad reminiscence
upon a little clump of ferns that, full of conceit, were waving
incessant salutes at their dainty reflections in the water.

"Hang the story of her life!" muttered the miserable youth in the pool.
His teeth were beginning to chatter.

"Do go on, aunty!" cried the eager Adnah.

"Well, child, they were all alike. Having insinuated their way into our
confidences by agreeable manners and by their really indisputable
attractiveness, having aroused the beginnings of tender emotions, what
did these young men do, one and all? Why, instead of waiting until the
acquaintance had ripened into mutual undying affection and then falling
gracefully to their knees with honorable proposals of marriage, they one
and all chose what seemed to be favorable moments an