"Oh, but you know, I'm not!" protested the May Girl with unmistakable emphasis. "No—No!"
"And that he was hoping to be married next September. On the 15th to be perfectly exact," I confided.
"Well, very likely I shall marry him," admitted the May Girl somewhat bafflingly. "But I'm not engaged to him now! Oh, I'm much too young to be engaged to him now! Why, even my grandmother thinks I'm much too young to be engaged to him now!—Why, he's most fifty years old!" she affirmed with widely dilating eyes. "—And I—I've scarcely been off my grandmother's place, you know, until this last winter! But if I'm grown-up enough by September, they say—you see I'll be eighteen and a half by September," she explained painstakingly, "so that's why I wanted to get engaged as much as I could this week!" she interrupted herself with quite merciless irrelevance. "If I've got to be married in September—without ever having been engaged or courted at all—I just thought I'd better go to work and pick up what experience I could—on my own hook!"
"Dr.—Dr. Brawne will, of course, make you a very distinguished husband," I stammered, "but are you sure you love him?"
"I love everybody!" dimpled the May Girl.
"Yes, dogs, of course," I conceded, "and Rabbits—and horses and——"
"And kittens," supplemented the May Girl.
"Your mother is—not living?" I asked rather abruptly.
"My father is dead," said the May Girl. "But my mother is in Egypt." Her lovely face was suddenly all excitement. "My mother ran away!"
"Oh! An elopement, you mean?" I laughed. "Ran away with your father. Youngsters used to do romantic things like that."