He's running his Cousin James' car this summer instead of the regular chauffeur, and keeping it in repair. Mr. Milford pays him a small salary, and (nobody knows it but me) Richard is saving every cent. He says if he can once get across the water he'll find some way to do his part. In the meantime he's digging away at his French, and Uncle Darcy's son Dan is teaching him wireless. He's so busy some days I scarcely see him. It's so different from the way it was last summer when he was at our house from morning till night.
The same jolly crowds are back this summer at the Gray Inn and the Nelson cottage, and Laura Nelson's midshipman cousin from Annapolis is here for a week. I shall not name and describe them now, but simply group them as minor characters.
Laura says, however, that she feels sure that the midshipman is destined to be anything but a minor character in my life. She prophecies he will be leading man in a very short while. That is so silly in Laura, although, of course, she couldn't know just how silly, because I've never explained to her that I am dedicated to a Career.
I have not said positively that I shall never marry, and sometimes I think I might be happier to have a home and about four beautiful and interesting children; that is, if it could be managed without interfering with my one great ambition in life. But positively, that must come first, no matter what the cost. Only thus can I reach the high goal I have set for myself and write mine as "one of the few, the immortal names that were not born to die."
CHAPTER II
THE MISUNDERSTOOD 'TEENS
"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness" where I could write without anybody butting in to ask what I'm doing! I suppose it's the penalty I must pay now for having been such a vain little peacock in the beginning. Because father praised my first letters when I was learning to write, I passed them over to the family for more praise before sealing them. Now they've grown to feel that it is their right to read them, and to expect it as a matter of course.