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“I thought you were going to help me!” her mother called after her just before the kitchen door closed.

“I have a paper due on Monday, I'd better get started on it!” she shouted back, but her mother wasn't fooled. The look in Kate's eyes after her mother had said Joe could come to dinner absolutely terrified her. She had had that look in her own eyes only once, when a friend of her father's had secretly courted her and broken her heart, but fortunately her parents had discovered it and intervened before anything too awful had happened.

And she had met Kate's father only weeks later. But now she was worried about Kate and Joe Allbright. She spoke to Clarke about it quietly in their bedroom later that evening. She told him about Joe coming to Thanksgiving dinner, but he didn't share her fears about him.

“He's just coming to dinner, Elizabeth. He's an interesting man. He's not foolish enough to run after a girl of eighteen. He's a handsome guy, he could have any woman he wanted.”

“I think you're being naive,” she said wisely.

“She's a beautiful girl, and I think she's fascinated by him. He's a very romantic figure. Half the women in this country would be happy to run after Charles Lindbergh, and I'm sure some of them have tried. Joe has the same kind of mystique and charm. All that aloofness and his being a pilot make him seem like a romantic figure to a young girl.”

“Are you afraid that Kate is running after him?” Her father looked startled. She had a good head on her shoulders, and her mother wasn't giving her credit for it.

“Possibly. Actually, I'm far more concerned that he may be running after her. Why did he call her at school, and not you at the office?”

“All right, I'll grant you, she's a lot prettier than I am. But she's a sensible girl, and he appears to be a gentleman.”

“What if they fall in love with each other?”

“Worse things could happen. He's not married. He's respectable. In fact, very much so. He has a job. And no, he's not a banker in Boston. But that could happen, you know.

She may meet a man who isn't a doctor or a lawyer or a banker. She could meet an Oriental or an Indian prince, or even a Frenchman or worse yet, a German, at Harvard, and she could wind up living halfway around the world. But we can't keep her locked up at home forever. And if Joe Allbright turns out to be the one, if he makes her happy and is good to her, I can live with it. He's a good man, Elizabeth, and I honestly don't think that's going to happen.