mistaken there is more difference between the ages of Ned Temple and
his wife. Poor soul! she looks old enough to be his mother, as I
remember him, but that may be partly due to the way she arranges her
hair. However, Ned himself may have changed; there must be considerable
wear and tear about matrimony, taken in connection with editing a
country newspaper. If I had married Ned I might have looked as old as
Mrs. Temple does. I wonder what Ned will do when he sees me. I know he
will not turn white, as poor Harry Goward did. That really worries me.
I am fond of little Peggy, and the situation is really rather awful.
She is engaged to a man who is fond of her aunt and cannot conceal it.
Still, the affection of most male things is curable. If Peggy has sense
enough to retain her love for frills and bows, and puts on her clothes
as well, and arranges her hair as prettily, after she has been married
a year--no, ten years (it will take at least ten years to make a proper
old-maid aunt of me)--she may have the innings. But Peggy has no
brains, and it really takes a woman with brains to keep her looks after
matrimony.

Of course, the poor little soul has no danger to fear from me; it is
lucky for her that her fiance fell in love with me; but it is the
principle of the thing which worries me. Harry Goward must be as fickle
as a honey-bee. There is no assurance whatever for Peggy that he will
not fall headlong in love--and headlong is just the word for it--with
any other woman after he has married her. I did not want the poor
fellow to stick to me, but when I come to think of it that is the
trouble. How short-sighted I am! It is his perverted fickleness rather
than his actual fickleness which worries me. He has proposed to Peggy
when he was in love with another woman, probably because he was in love
with another woman. Now Peggy, although she is not brilliant, in spite
of her co-education (perhaps because of it), is a darling, and she