t be
presented all wrong last time, and they got things so muddled that it
was voted on incorrectly. I will have to write it out for him so he can
explain it to them. I will need you in many ways to help me help Peter
be Mayor of Glendale, Evelina. I am wearied after ten years of the
strain of his office. I shall call on you for assistance often in the
most important matters," with which promise, that sounded like a threat,
she proceeded to march down the front path, almost stepping on
Henrietta, who was coming up the same path, with almost the same
emphasis. There was some sort of an explosion, and I hope the kind of
words I heard hurled after the train were not used.

"That old black crow is a-going to git in trouble with me some day,
Marfy," Henrietta remarked, as she settled herself on the arm of Cousin
Martha's chair, after bestowing a smudgy kiss on the little white curl
that wrapped around one of the dear old lady's pink little ears. I had
felt that way about Cousin Martha myself at the Bunch's age, and we
exchanged a sympathetic smile on the subject.

"Well, what _are_ you going to do, Evelina?" asked Sallie, and she
turned such a young, helpless, wondering face up to me from the center
of her cluster of babies, that my heart almost failed me at the idea of
pouring what seemed to me at that moment the poison of modernity into
the calm waters of her and Cousin Martha's primitive placidity.

"You'll have to live some place where there is a man," she continued,
with worried conviction.

My time had come, and the fight was on. Oh, Jane!

"I don't believe I really feel that way about it," I began in the
gentlest of manners, and slowly, so as to feel my way. "You see, Sallie
dear, and dearest Cousin Martha, I have had to be out in the world so
much--alone, that I am--used to it. I--I haven't had a man's protection
for so long that I don't need it, as I would if I were like you two
blessed sheltered women."

"I know it has been hard, dear," said Cousin Martha gently looking her
sympathy at my lorn state, over her glasses.

"I don't see how you have stood it at all," said Sallie, about to
dissolve in tears. "The love and protection and sympathy of a man are
the only things in life worth anything to a woman. Since my loss I don't
know what I would have done without Cousin James. You must come into his
kind care, Evelina."

"I must learn to endure loneliness," I answered sadly, about to begin to
gulp from force