ndresse for Peggy--it was never
anything more, I am convinced. She is too young for him. A doctor sees
so many women; he grows critical, if not captious. Character goes for
more with him than with most men; looks go for less; and poor little
Peggy--who can deny?--up to this point in her development is chiefly
looks.

I intimated to the doctor that my errand to New York was of an important
nature: that it concerned my younger sister; that my husband was,
unfortunately, out of town, and that I needed masculine advice. I am not
in the habit of flattering the doctor, and he swallowed this delicate
bait, as I thought he would. When I asked him if he didn't think he
needed a little vacation, if he didn't think he could get the old doctor
from Southwest Eastridge to take his practice for two days, he said he
didn't know but he could. The grippe epidemic had gone down, nothing
more strenuous than a few cases of measles stood in the way; in fact,
Eastridge at the present time, he averred, was lamentably healthy.
When he had committed himself so far as this, he hesitated, and very
seriously said:

"Mrs. Price, you have never asked me to do a foolish thing, and I have
known you for a good many years. It is too late to come over and talk it
out with you. If you assure me that you consider your object in making
this request important I will go. We won't waste words about it. What
train do you take?"

I am not a person of divination or intuition. I think I have rather a
commonplace, careful, painstaking mind. But if ever I had an inspiration
in my life I think I have one now. Perhaps it is the novelty of it that
makes me confide in it with so little reflection. My inspiration, in a
word, is this:

Aunt Elizabeth has reached the point where she is ready for a new man. I
know I don't understand her kind of woman by experience. I don't suppose
I do by sympathy. I have to reason her out.

I have reasoned Aunt Elizabeth out to this conclusion: She always has
had, she always must have, she always will have, the admiration of some
man or men to engross her attention. She is an attractive woman; she
knows it; women admit it; and men feel it. I don't think Aunt Elizabeth
is a heartless person; not an irresponsible one, only an idle and
unhappy one. She lives on this intoxicant as other women might live on
tea or gossip, as a man would take his dram or his tobacco. She drinks
this wine because she is thirsty, and the plain, cool, sprin