Pat herself believed she was in love…really in love. There were weeks of pretty speeches and prettier silences and enchanted moons and stars and kittens…though in her secret soul she suspected him of not caring overmuch about cats. But at least he pretended to like the kittens. One couldn’t have everything. He was well-born, well-bred, good-looking, and charming, and for the first time since the days of Lester Conroy Pat felt thrills and queer sensations generally.

“I thought I’d left all that behind with seventeen,” she told Rae, “but it really seems to have come back.”

Rae, who was expecting “one of the men she’s engaged to…” à la May Binnie…carefully perfumed her throat.

“A plain answer to a plain question, Pat. Do you mean to marry him?”

“I’m not Betty Baxter,” said Pat with a twinkle.

“Don’t be exasperating. Everyone knows he means to ask you. Candidly, Pat, I’d like him very much for a brother-in-law.”

Pat looked sober. In imagination she saw the paragraph in the Charlottetown papers announcing her engagement.

“I blush when I hear his step at the door,” she said meditatively.

“I’ve noticed that myself,” grinned Rae.

“And I suffer agonies of jealousy if he says a word of admiration for any other girl. On the whole…I haven’t quite made up my mind…not quite…but I think, Rae, when he says, ‘Will you please?’ I’ll say, ‘Yes, thank you.’”

Rae got up and hugged Pat chokily.

“I’m glad…I’m glad. And yet I’m on the point of howling.”

“Confidence for confidence, Rae. Which, if either, of your young men do you intend to marry?”

Rae pulled an ear of Squedunk, who was sitting on his haunches on her bed, gazing at the girls with his usual limpid, round-eyed look. Gentleman Tom looked as if all the wisdom of the ages was his, Bold-and-Bad looked as if life was one amusing adventure, but Squedunk always looked as if he could be a kitten forever if he wanted to.