“Nothing, Florence.”

“Nothing!  That’s what you always say about the very most inter’sting things that happen in the whole family!  What is all this, papa?”

“It’s nothing that would be interesting to little girls, Florence.  Merely some family matters.”

“My goodness!” Florence exclaimed.  “I’m not a ‘little girl’ any more, papa!  You’re always forgetting my age!  And if it’s a family matter I belong to the family, I guess, about as much as anybody else, don’t I?  Grandpa himself isn’t any more one of the family than I am, I don’t care how old he is!”

This was undeniable, and her father laughed.  “It’s really nothing you’d care about one way or the other,” he said.

“Well, I’d care about it if it’s a secret,” Florence insisted.  “If it’s a secret I’d want to know it, whatever it’s about.”

“Oh, it isn’t a secret, particularly, I suppose.  At least, it’s not to be made public for a time; it’s only to be known in the family.”

“Well, didn’t I just prove I’m as much one o’ the family as——­”

“Never mind,” her father said soothingly.  “I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your knowing it—­if you won’t go telling everybody.  Your Aunt Julia has just written us that she’s engaged.”

Mrs. Atwater uttered an exclamation, but she was too late to check him.

“I’m afraid you oughtn’t to have told Florence.  She isn’t just the most discreet——­”

“Pshaw!” he laughed.  “She certainly is ‘one of the family’, however, and Julia wrote that all of the family might be told.  You’ll not speak of it outside the family, will you, Florence?”

But Florence was not yet able to speak of it, even inside the family; so surprising, sometimes, are parents’ theories of what will not interest their children.  She sat staring, her mouth open, and in the uncertain illumination of the room these symptoms of her emotional condition went unobserved.

“I say, you won’t speak of Julia’s engagement outside the family, will you, Florence?”

“Papa!” she gasped.  “Did Aunt Julia write she was engaged?”

“Yes.”

“To get married?”

“It would seem so.”

“To who?”

“‘To whom,’ Florence,” her mother suggested primly.

“Mamma!” the daughter cried.  “Who’s Aunt Julia engaged to get married to?  Noble Dill?”

“Good gracious, no!” Mrs. Atwater exclaimed.  “What an absurd idea!  It’s to a young man in the place she’s visiting—­a stranger to all of us.  Julia only met him a few weeks ago.”  Here she forgot Florence, and turned again to her husband, wearing her former expression of experienced foreboding.

“It’s just as I said.  It’s exactly like Julia to do such a reckless thing!”

“But as we don’t know anything at all about the young man,” he remonstrated, “how do you know it’s reckless?”