All alone in her room, Olwen clapped her hands over this idea. Swiftly it began to enlarge itself.
"Yes; why not Uncle? The very person! He's old, but then that's all the better; for her. He's just the right age, in fact!"
Professor Howel-Jones was a sturdy seventy; and to Nineteen the gap between forty and seventy, seen vaguely down the perspective of the years, is scarcely noticeable, particularly when it is the man who is seventy—men generally being of themselves younger than women. (Or so we are told.)
"Yes; it must be Uncle. He's such a dear. A widower, too; and I'm sure he ought to have somebody nice to be a comfort to him, always there. Not only me. Besides, I might be——"
She hardly dared yet to finish to herself the thought, "Besides, I might be getting married and leaving him any time now!"
So she pursued her ingenuous scheme. "He ought to have a nice wife. He really ought. And Mrs. Cartwright would be splendid—for him. He does like her. He was talking to her for hours in the Forest the other day about that essay of his on Welsh Flower-names. He calls her 'My dear lady' always. And she likes him; why, only at lunch today she said something about 'that wonderful-looking old Uncle of yours.' She admires him. Now, if she only had enough Charm to attract him," thought Olwen, "so that he would ask her to marry him, I'm sure she'd be only too glad to! I don't suppose any one else has ever asked her to marry again ... but I would so like her for a kind of Auntie," decided the young girl, hastily taking out her needle again and threading it with pink silk.
Another length of narrow ribbon was stitched to one end of the fourth sachet.
It was destined for the neck of Mrs. Cartwright.
At Olwen's age a thing is considered better left undone, than not done at once.
At once she decided to take this gift to her friend.