onounced sentence, what do you think it was? Confinement to the house
for a week and if after that, I ever meet you again, to be packed off
to a finishing-school in Massachusetts. She rapped her stick on the
floor by way of a full stop, and waved her hand toward the door. I
never said a word, not a single one. What was the use? I gave her a
little bow and went. Just as I was going to rush upstairs and think
over what I could do, Grandfather came out and told me to go to his
room to read something to him. And there, for the first time, he let me
see what a fine old fellow he really is. He agreed with Grandmother
that I ought not to have met you on the sly. It was dangerous, he said,
though perfectly natural. He was afraid I found it very trying to live
among a lot of old grouches with their best feet in the grave, but he
begged me to put up with it because he would miss me so. He liked
having me about, not only to read to him but to look at. I reminded him
of Grandmother when she was young, and life was worth living.

"I cried then. I couldn't help it--more for his sake than mine. He
spoke with such a funny sort of sadness. 'Be patient, my dear,' he
said. 'Treat us both with a little kindness. You're top dog. You have
all your life before you. Make allowances for two old people entering
second childhood. You'll be old some day, you know.' And he said this
with such a twisted sort of smile that I felt awfully sorry for him,
and he saw it and opened out and told me how appalling it was to become
feeble when the heart is as young as ever. I had no idea he felt like
that."

"When I left him I tried hard to be as patient as he asked me to be and
wait till Mother comes back and make the allowances he spoke about and
give up seeing you and all that. But when I got up to my room with the
echo of Grandmother's rasping voice in my ears, the thought of being
shut up in the house for a week and treated like a lunatic was too much
for me. What had I done that every other healthy girl doesn't do every
day without a question? How COULD I go on living there, watched and
suspected? How could I put up any longer with the tyranny of an old
lady who made me feel artificial and foolish and humiliated--a kind of
doll stuffed with saw dust?

"Marty, I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't. Something went snap, and I
just flung a few things into a suit-case, dropped it out the window,
climbed down the creeper and made a dash for freedom. Nothing