enteen never knows
it. At seventeen dreams DO satisfy because you think the realities are
waiting for you further on. When I was seventeen, Anne, I didn't think
forty-five would find me a white-haired little old maid with nothing but
dreams to fill my life."

"But you aren't an old maid," said Anne, smiling into Miss Lavendar's
wistful woodbrown eyes. "Old maids are BORN . . . they don't BECOME."

"Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have old
maidenhood thrust upon them," parodied Miss Lavendar whimsically.

"You are one of those who have achieved it then," laughed Anne, "and
you've done it so beautifully that if every old maid were like you they
would come into the fashion, I think."

"I always like to do things as well as possible," said Miss Lavendar
meditatively, "and since an old maid I had to be I was determined to be
a very nice one. People say I'm odd; but it's just because I follow my
own way of being an old maid and refuse to copy the traditional pattern.
Anne, did anyone ever tell you anything about Stephen Irving and me?"

"Yes," said Anne candidly, "I've heard that you and he were engaged
once."

"So we were . . . twenty-five years ago . . . a lifetime ago. And we
were to have been married the next spring. I had my wedding dress made,
although nobody but mother and Stephen ever knew THAT. We'd been engaged
in a way almost all our lives, you might say. When Stephen was a little
boy his mother would bring him here when she came to see my mother; and
the second time he ever came . . . he was nine and I was six . . . he
told me out in the garden that he had pretty well made up his mind to
marry me when he grew up. I remember that I said 'Thank you'; and when
he was gone I told mother very gravely that there was a great weight off
my mind, because I wasn't frightened any more about having to be an old
maid. How poor mother laughed!"

"And what went wrong?" asked Anne breathlessly.

"We had just a stupid, silly, commonplace quarrel. So commonplace that,
if you'll believe me, I don't even remember just how it began. I hardly
know who was the more to blame for it. Stephen did really begin it, but
I suppose I provoked him by some foolishness of mine. He had a rival or
two, you see. I was vain and coquettish and liked to tease him a little.
He was a very high-strung, sensitive fellow. Well, we parted in a temper
on both sides. But I thought it would all come right; and it would hav