see what must be done. I'm ever
so much obliged, Miss Sally."

"I wonder who he is going to marry," said Miss Sally, careless of
grammar, after he had gone. "Poor, poor girl!"

"I don't see why you should pity her," said Joyce, not looking up from
her embroidery. There was just the merest tremor in her voice. Miss
Sally looked at her sharply.

"I pity any woman who is foolish enough to marry," she said solemnly.
"No man is to be trusted, Joyce--no man. They are all ready to break a
trusting woman's heart for the sport of it. Never you allow any man
the chance to break yours, Joyce. I shall never consent to your
marrying anybody, so mind you don't take any such notion into your
head. There oughtn't to be any danger, for I have instilled correct
ideas on this subject into you from childhood. But girls are such
fools. I know, because I was one myself once."

"Of course, I would never marry without your consent, Aunt Sally,"
said Joyce, smiling faintly but affectionately at her aunt. Joyce
loved Miss Sally with her whole heart. Everybody did who knew her.
There never was a more lovable creature than this pretty little old
maid who hated the men so bitterly.

"That's a good girl," said Miss Sally approvingly. "I own that I have
been a little afraid that this Willard Stanley was coming here to see
you. But my mind is set at rest on that point now, and I shall help
him fix up his doll house with a clear conscience. Eden, indeed!"

Miss Sally sniffed and tripped out of the room to hunt up a furniture
catalogue. Joyce sighed and let her embroidery slip to the floor.

"Oh, I'm afraid Willard's plan won't succeed," she murmured. "I'm
afraid Aunt Sally will never consent to our marriage. And I can't and
won't marry him unless she does, for she would never forgive me and I
couldn't bear that. I wonder what makes her so bitter against men. She
is so sweet and loving, it seems simply unnatural that she should have
such a feeling so deeply rooted in her. Oh, what will she say when she
finds out--dear little Aunt Sally? I couldn't bear to have her angry
with me."

The next day Willard came up from the harbour and took Miss Sally down
to see Eden. Eden was a tiny, cornery, gabled grey house just across
the road and down a long, twisted windy lane, skirting the edge of a
beech wood. Nobody had lived in it for four years, and it had a
neglected, out-at-elbow appearance.

"It's rather a box of a place, isn't it?" said Willard sl