believe me, but Wilhelmina did. Her pretty face lighted up with
interest.

"Oh, won't you tell us about him, Miss Holmes?" she coaxed, "and
why didn't you marry him?"

"That is right, Miss Mercer," said Josephine Cameron, with a
nasty little laugh. "Make her tell. We're all interested. It's
news to us that Charlotte ever had a beau."

If Josephine had not said that, I might not have gone on. But
she did say it, and, moreover, I caught Mary Gillespie and Adella
Gilbert exchanging significant smiles. That settled it, and made
me quite reckless. "In for a penny, in for a pound," thought I,
and I said with a pensive smile:

"Nobody here knew anything about him, and it was all long, long
ago."

"What was his name?" asked Wilhelmina.

"Cecil Fenwick," I answered promptly. Cecil had always been my
favorite name for a man; it figured quite frequently in the blank
book. As for the Fenwick part of it, I had a bit of newspaper in
my hand, measuring a hem, with "Try Fenwick's Porous Plasters"
printed across it, and I simply joined the two in sudden and
irrevocable matrimony.

"Where did you meet him?" asked Georgie.