"It's more like the beginning of everything for you," contradicted Gay. "You'll be beginning your shopping soon, and your trips to the tailor and the dressmaker and the milliner, and you know you'll enjoy getting all the lovely clothes you're to have as a débutante. It'll be as much fun as planning a trousseau. Then there'll be your début party in your Aunt Jane's lovely big town house, and all the rest that's to follow. It'll be just grand! A regular procession of social successes and triumphs.
"And as for Leland," she continued, mentioning him for the first time since his departure. "You needn't worry about that. Of course we knew what had happened just as soon as he bounced in looking like a thunder-cloud, and announced his intention of leaving next morning. We'd seen it coming on all summer. Jameson is tickled to death over it, for this trip to South America is one he has been wanting him to take for a long time. They have some property there that needs looking after, and he thinks now that his ambition is roused he'll take some interest in things."
"But no mattah what he does," said Lloyd firmly, "I'll nevah change my mind. I don't want to get married, Gay," she added almost tearfully. "I read a story the othah day, the diary of a young girl that made me think of myself. She said, 'I don't want to be married. Just to be loved and adored and written to and crowned Queen of Somebody's heart.' Of co'se any girl wants that."
"That's just the way I feel," confided Gay after a moment's pause. Then, "You've been so busy this summer with your own affairs I don't suppose you've noticed what's been going on around you; but I'm afraid I've got myself into a pickle. You see I've already invited Kitty down to San Antonio to spend Lent with me, and I've written to Frank Percival about her, and told her about him and got them interested in each other. You know ever since I've been so intimate with Kitty I've wanted her to marry Frank, so that she'd always live near me. And now—now I'm not so sure that I'm going to live there myself."
"You dreadful little match-makah," laughed Lloyd, so amused by Gay's confession that she never thought to inquire what had caused her change of mind about her own residence. "You oughtn't to meddle in such things. Just look what a pickle you got me into. If you hadn't made me promise what you did about being nice to Mistah Harcourt, and told him the things you did about me, we'd nevah have had the scene we did, and would have been good friends always. But look what you've done. Sent him on a hopeless chase aftah a shadow, for he says he'll nevah change his mind, and I know I won't change mine."
Gay giggled. "When an irresistible force meets an immovable body, what does happen? I've always wondered."
"Just what will happen when Mistah Harcourt comes back," was Lloyd's dignified answer. "I'll not be moved."
"And he's not to be resisted," said Gay. "So there we go in the same old circle. But I'm glad for some reasons that you're so determined, for if I should make up my mind to live in the Valley then I'd be glad you were here instead of in San Antonio."
"Oh, are you all going to buy the Cabin?" exclaimed Lloyd, sitting up in bed in her eagerness. "How lovely."
"No, 'we all' are not," confessed Gay. "I knew you didn't have any idea of what was going on this summer. But—well, you know who my first 'Knight of the Looking-glass' was. He says the Scripture says that 'the first shall be last,' and he insists he is both. He wants to buy the Cabin some day, so that my little mirror can hang there always, up among the roses where he first saw me. It would be sweet and romantic, wouldn't it? But it doesn't seem exactly fair to Kitty to get her tied up down there and then skip out and leave her."