"Then why send him away?" demanded Miss Leslie.
Peggy summoned up a troubled smile.
"Dear old Jean," she said, "you are so practical!"
"Practical? Aye!" replied Jean Leslie grimly. "If women were a little more practical and a little less finicky about what they are pleased to call their hearts, this world would be a more understandable place to live in. Listen! I had a girl friend once—as intimate a friend as yours, I dare say—and when the man she wanted asked her to marry him, she said 'No.' She meant 'Yes,' of course,—she merely wanted him to ask her another half-dozen times or so more,—but the stupid man did not understand. He went away, and married some other body whom he did not love, just to be quit of thinking about her. Men are made that way. They will do any daft thing—take to drinking or marry another woman—to drown the pain of remembrance. But this friend of mine, being a woman, could not do that. She just stayed single, and in course of time became an old maid—and a practical one, I promise you! But let us get back to the other girl. Why did she send her lad away?"
"Because there was some one else whom she could not leave."
"Yes."
Jean Leslie nodded her head slowly and comprehendingly.
"I see," she said at length. "That is different. You mean that the relative would have been helpless without her?"
"Helpless and—friendless," said Peggy gravely.