him poor dear Mr. Darling now, but Susie
says she didn't when he was alive; she called him something quite
different. I wonder what it was.)

Well, as I said, Father hitched and fidgeted, and said he didn't know,
he was sure; that she'd better take wiser counsel than his, and that
he was very sorry, but she really must excuse him. And he got through
the door while he was talking just as fast as he could himself, so
that she couldn't get in a single word to keep him. Then he was gone.

Mrs. Darling stayed on the piazza two whole hours longer, but Father
never came out at all again.

It was the next morning that Susie said this over the back-yard fence
to Bridget:

"It does beat all how popular this house is with the ladies--after
college hours!"

And Bridget chuckled and answered back:

"Sure it is! An' I do be thinkin' the Widder Darlin' is a heap fonder
of Miss Jane now than she would have been had poor dear Mr. Darlin'
lived!"

And she chuckled again, and so did Susie. And then, all of a sudden,
I knew. It was Father all those ladies wanted. It was Father Mrs.
Darling wanted. They came here to see him. They wanted to marry him.
_They_ were the prospective suitors. As if I didn't know what Susie
and Bridget meant! I'm no child!

But all this doesn't make Father like _them_. I'm not sure but it
makes him dislike them. Anyhow, he won't have anything to do with
them. He always runs away over to the observatory, or somewhere, and
won't see them; and I've heard him say things about them to Aunt Jane,
too--words that sound all right, but that don't mean what they say,
and everybody knows they don't. So, as I said before, I don't see any
chance of Father's having a love story to help out this book--not
right away, anyhow.

As for _my_ love story--I don't see any chance of that's beginning,
either. Yet, seems as if there ought to be the beginning of it by this
time--I'm going on fifteen. Oh, there have been _beginnings_, lots of
them--only Aunt Jane wouldn't let them go on and be endings, though I
told her good and plain that I thought it perfectly all right; and I
reminded her about the brook and river meeting where I stood, and all
that.

But I couldn't make her see it at all. She said, "Stuff and
nonsense"--and when Aunt Jane says _both_ stuff and nonsense I know
there's nothing _doing_. (Oh, dear, that's slang! Aunt Jane says she
does wish I would eliminate the slang from my vocabulary. Well, I
wish _she'd_