girl cleared her voice--"don't you think
it would be kinder to say so once and for all? You see, if he were sure
you would not have him" (suddenly hot color surged over her face), "he
might want to marry some one else."

"Old Jim marry! Jemima! What are you driving at? What can you mean?"

"I mean--me," gasped the girl, and suddenly turned and fled from the
room.

It took Kate some moments to regain sufficient presence of of mind to
follow her. She found her level-headed daughter face downward among the
pillows of her bed, sobbing most humanly.

Kate sat down beside her and pulled the golden head over into her arms,
where she smoothed and caressed it as she had rarely done since the
girl's babyhood.

"Now tell mother all about it. What put such a strange idea into your
wise little old pate? Not Jim himself--I'm sure of that."

"Oh, no!--But it isn't a strange idea," protested the muffled voice from
her lap. "I don't want to be an old maid--" (sniff, sniff). "He hasn't
asked me yet, exactly--but he would if he were quite sure you didn't
want him--" (sob). "And I'm twenty years old, now. I want to be married,
like other women."

"Only twenty years old!" repeated her mother, gently.

"Oh, I know it sounds young, but it isn't always as young as it sounds"
said the girl with unconscious pathos. "Look at me, Mother--I'm older
than you, right now! I don't believe I ever was very young."

"But you may be yet," said Kate. "With your first lover, your first
baby--Ah, child, child, you _must_ not run the risk of marrying without
love! You don't know what love can do to you."

"Yes, I do," whispered Jemima.

"What! You can't tell me you're in love with old Jim?"

The girl sat erect, and propounded certain decided views of hers on love
and marriage as earnestly as if her little nose were not pink with
embarrassed tears, and her eyes swimming with them like a troubled
baby's.

"Being in love doesn't seem as important to me as it does to some
people. Of course it's necessary, or the world would not go on. There
has to be some sort of glamour to--to make things possible.--But I'm
sure it's not a comfortable feeling to live with, any more than hunger
would be.--Being in love does quite as much harm as good, anyway. Half
the crimes in the world are the result of it, and all the unnecessary
children. I don't want love, Mother! It hurts, and it makes fools of
otherwise intelligent persons. I shouldn't like, ever, to lose my