She was too old to know much of love, or its symptoms in a girl.

Would Nina St.Claire know?
Possibly, for she and Jerrie were great friends, and girls always told each other their secrets, so Maude said, and Maude was just then his oracle.

He had seen so much of her the last few months that he felt as if he knew her even better than he did Jerrie, and he was certainly more at his ease in her presence.

Then why not talk with Maude and enlist her as a partisan.

He might certainly venture to make her his confidente, she had been so very communicative and familiar with him, telling him things which he had wondered at, with regard to her father, and mother, and Tom, and the family generally.