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 explain her projected course of action to them, justifiably believing them incapable of discriminating between the men of her acquaintance and the more plausible males of London, New York, and Rome, save to the disadvantage of the latter group. What they really feared, of course, was that she would never marry at all and indeed it was quite true, if one reasoned by precedent, that a girl of twenty-one in Kansas City who still remained unmarried might be regarded as a spinster, a spinster with a few more chances, to be sure, but none the less a spinster. Discussion thereafter waxed warm. Her father and mother urged her more and more vehemently, and with a frequency which infuriated her, to make up her mind, to bestow her hand and heart on this one or that one. Why had she refused this rich attorney with his brilliant present and a promise of a still more dazzling future? Why was that pump manufacturer abhorrent to her? How could she find this utterly agreeable physician, handsome in the bargain, distasteful? She had no satisfactory explanations to offer. All she could do was to rely on tears and furious fits of assumed anger to postpone the event, to give her a few more weeks of peace.

During this recital the onslaught of words had been so terrific, the sentences had been pitched for-