CHAPTER I
I am in love. It is the most scrumptious thing I have ever been in. Perfectly magnificent! Every time I think of it I feel as if I were going down an elevator forty floors and my heart flippity-flops so my teeth mortify me. He used to be engaged to Elizabeth Hamilton Carter, the niece of the lady at whose house I am boarding this summer, but he did something he ought not to have done, or he didn't do something he ought to have done, and they had a fuss. No one seems to know the cause of it, but it was probably from her wanting him to be blind to everything on earth but her, and a man isn't going to be blind when he wants to see, and then she got hurt. I'd rather live in a house with a cackling hen or a grunting pig than the sort of person who is always getting hurt. But she's very pretty. Pink-and-white pretty, with uplifting eyes and a little mouth that shuts itself when mad and says nothing, and oozes more disagreeableness than if it talked. He still thinks there isn't another girl in town who can touch her in looks. I don't suppose a man ever gets over a real case of pink-and-white. It's the kind that makes a tender memory if it isn't the best sort to live with, and men like to have a memory to sigh over in secret. Her rejected one may sigh in secret, but in public he does not seem to be suffering. He isn't suffering. We like each other very much.
The reason I am glad I am in love is that I am sixteen and I was getting afraid I wasn't ever going to fall in love. Three or four times I have thought I was in it, but I wasn't, and I was beginning to be sure I was the sort of person who doesn't fall. And, besides, it is good for Billy, who, because he is twenty, thinks he is old enough to have some things settled which there is no need to settle too soon. Settled things are not exciting. I love excitement and not knowing what a day may bring forth. Billy doesn't. He wants his ducks to be always in a row.
Ever since he fished me out of the water-barrel sunk in Grandmother Hatley's garden, when I was four and he eight, he has seemed to think I belonged to him; and, though he doesn't imagine I know it and never mentions it, he is always around when I am in danger or trouble, to get me out. I suppose saving my life three or four times makes him feel I can't take care of myself and therefore he must take care of me, but that's a mistake. I have never had a horse to run away with me but once. Billy did tell me not to ride her, and when she ran and would have pitched me over her head and down a gully he caught her in the nick of time and caught me, too, but that's the only time a thing of that sort ever happened. He was real nice about it and never said anything concerning having told me so and didn't make remarks of the sort which other people rub in, but the next day the horse was sent away. That's the thing which makes me fighting furious with Billy sometimes. He doesn't say things. He does them. I wasn't afraid of that horse and was going to keep on riding her, but the next day there was no Lady-Bird to ride. The reason he sent her away was I wouldn't promise not to ride her. Our summer homes are on adjoining places and Horson, their stableman, a nice, drinky old person, lets me take out anything I want, anything of Billy's, and, knowing he couldn't trust Horson any more than me, he lent Lady-Bird to a man miles and miles away and I never saw her again until she was a tame old thing I did not want to ride. Billy behaves as if I were a child!
And then the very next winter I fell through the ice and he had to jump in and get me out. He told me not to go to a certain part of the lake. He had been all over it and tried it before I got my skates on, but I forgot and went. A boy was with me, a skunky little rat, who, when he saw the ice was cracking, tried to pull me back, and then he let go my hand and flop I went in and flop came Billy behind me while the little Fur Coat stood off and bawled for help and said afterward he didn't know how to swim. Having on heavy clothes, I went down quick and was hard to get up, and I would be an angel this minute if Billy hadn't been there. But Billy is always there, which is what makes this summer so queer. He isn't here.
On account of servants and things his mother didn't want to open their country place this year, and my mother didn't want to open hers, so two houses are closed. That means a scatteration for both families and is why I am here and Billy in Europe; and if he is having as good a time as I am he isn't grunting at the change. He didn't want to go to Europe. His father made him. His mother and two sisters needed a man along and, as Mr. Sloane couldn't go, Billy had to, and he was a great big silent growl when he went off. I wasn't. I wanted to come to Twickenham Town. We had passed through it once on our way to Florida and I have been crazy to come back ever since, and when I found Mother was going with Florine and Jessica to a splashy place I didn't want to go to I begged her to let me come here and board with Miss Susanna Mason and—glory be—she let me do it!
She is a sort of relation, Miss Susanna is, a farback one, but nothing is too far back to claim here, and everybody who is anybody is kin to one another, or kin to some one else's kin, which makes for sociableness, and I am having a perfectly grand time. In all the world there isn't another place like the one I am in this summer, and I am getting so familiar with a new kind of natural history that maybe some day I will be an authority on it. Ancestry is the chief asset of Twickenham Town, and though you speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not ancestors it profiteth you nothing. That is, among the natives. Being an outsider, I have decided not to have ancestors, and I am going to see if the people won't take me in for myself. I have always believed a nice person was nice if there weren't any family shrubs and things, and a nasty one was nasty no matter how many coats of arms there were or how heirloomy their houses, so I have asked Miss Susanna please to excuse me if I don't call her cousin (we are seventh removed, I think she said), and also, unless she has to, I hope she won't tell any one my real name is Katherine Bird, but let everybody call me Kitty Canary, as everybody does at home. I think she thought it was very queer in me to say such things, but she smiled her precious, patient little smile, and, though she didn't promise, she evidently hasn't mentioned my sure-enough name, as no one here calls me by any other than the one Billy gave me when I wasn't much bigger than a baby. Just Kitty Canary will do for me.