t one cannot know everything at fifteen,
and, as Mabel Blossom always says, "there is yet time." We all know
just the kind of men they're going to be, though. Mine will be a brave
young officer, of course, for a general's daughter should not marry out
of the army, and he will die for his country, leaving me with a broken
heart. Maudie Joyce says hers must be a man who will rule her with a rod
of iron and break her will and win her respect, and then be gentle and
loving and tender. And Mabel Blossom says she's perfectly sure hers will
be fat and have a blond mustache and laugh a great deal. Once she said
maybe none of us would ever get _any_; but the look Maudie Joyce and I
turned upon her checked her thoughtless words. Life is bitter enough as
it is without thinking of dreadful things in the future. I sometimes
fear that underneath her girlish gayety Mabel Blossom conceals a morbid
nature. But I am forgetting Josephine James. This story will tell why,
with all her advantages of wealth and education and beauty, she remained
a maiden lady till she was twenty-eight; and she might have kept on,
too, if Kittie had not taken matters in hand and settled them for her.

Kittie says Josephine was always romantic and spent long hours of her
young life in girlish reveries and dreams. Of course that isn't the way
Kittie said it, but if I should tell this story in her crude, unformed
fashion, you wouldn't read very far. What Kittie really said was that
Josephine used to "moon around the grounds a lot and bawl, and even try
to write poetry." I understand Josephine's nature, so I will go on and
tell this story in my own way, but you must remember that some of the
credit belongs to Kittie and Mabel Blossom; and if Sister Irmingarde
reads it in class, they can stand right up with me when the author is
called for.

Well, when Josephine James graduated she got a lot of prizes and things,
for she was a clever girl, and had not spent all her time writing poetry
and thinking deep thoughts about life. She realized the priceless
advantages of a broad and thorough education and of association with the
most cultivated minds. That sentence comes out of our prospectus. Then
she went home and went out a good deal, and was very popular and stopped
writing poetry, and her dear parents began to feel happy and hopeful
about her, and think she would marry and have a nice family, which is
indeed woman's highest, noblest mission in life. But Josephine cher