Dear Buddy:
Cross my heart and hope to die. I am quite a lot more grown up than I was when you knew me, and I understand the sacredness of confidences as I didn't at that time. You don't need to worry about trusting me. I love Ruth Farraday very much, and I should think anybody might.
Well, she is not a happy girl. There is a man called Mr. Piggy Chambers—that is what Peggy calls him, anyway—who is in love with her and asked her to marry him. I heard him that day that I went to Provincetown with him in his car. I did not tell you that I went to Provincetown with him, because I do not like him anyway, and I did not want you to think I would go motoring with a man like that. The fact was that I went to chaperone him and her. Well, she told him that he could not teach her love because she would be an icicle to him, and she said she did not know much about love anyway, but he insisted, to no purpose. I ought to have stuffed my ears, and so had Peggy, but some way we didn't.
The only drawback is that he is around the place all the time, and does not seem to be discouraged in any way. Peggy is furious at him. Whenever I see him on their porch eating, in that wicker chaise-longue they have, I cannot tell you how I despise him, in spite of his being really very nice, if you like that kind. He doesn't seem to have any neck, to speak of, and his collars look as if they would choke him. His eyes are small, though bright and animated looking.
Ruth Farraday comes here a great deal, and she asks for you sometimes, too. She loves Grandmother more than anybody does outside of the family. Their eyes look lovingly at each other even when they are not speaking, you know, like cousins or something. She is very kind to me, and never neglects a chance to do nice things for me. I told you how Granddaddy kissed her. She is sweet. She is just sweet. If I loved her, Buddy—(you told me not to talk this way to you once, but I am going to)—I would tell her I did, in some way. She is awfully little, for a girl as old as she is, and people protect her. Peggy protects her in a great many ways, and I know she is not happy.
I guess there is one thing that I ought to repeat. Yesterday she said, "How is your brother?" and I said, "He is about the same," and she said, "I've just discovered how ill he has been. I wish I had known it before," and I said, "Well, he might get discharged soon," because I didn't know what else to say. She said, "I should have written him, if I had thought he cared." Well, what could I say? I didn't say anything, because you have warned me so against blabbing. Then she said, "I can't write him now very well. I can't."
Well, so this is about all I know. I wish it were something helpful, but it seems like nothing at all. I am only trying to write as I would be written by. (See the Golden Rule.) If I have not made you sicker, and you love me into the bargain, please tell me so. When you are fourteen, responsibility frightens you a good deal. At fifteen or sixteen, you throw it off better. If you tell me anything to say to Ruth Farraday, I will say it. She is certainly sweet, and I certainly love her, and she is certainly not a happy girl.
Your sister Elizabeth.
P. S. That day we went to Provincetown, when I was walking alone with her, she said you were probably devoted to dozens of girls, and I said positively that you weren't. She said she would tell me a secret, and that was, that she thought you were very nice. It doesn't sound much to write it, but I think she meant it, in spite of laughing at it when she said it. She is certainly sweet. I would write to her, if it was me.
She made a special trip to the post office to mail this letter, and as she dropped it into the slot, she had a moment of dizziness, as if the floor of the post office had suddenly shaken itself under her feet. Even the blueberry cake did not tempt her to eat very heartily at supper.
"Elizabeth is growing up too fast," her grandmother complained, "watermelon and blueberry cake don't interest her."
"I been trying to interest her with the account of the young red-head that rode with me to Hyannis when she wouldn't go along. He's a pretty likely young chap, mad about electricity, he says, and going to study to be an electrical engineer, but Elizabeth is too old for such light talk. Can't we think o' something solid that'll kind o' get her attention?"
"She don't feel very well to-night, I guess. Leave her alone, Father."
"I don't feel sick," said Elizabeth, "but I feel about ninety years old. I'll just go and sit in Granddaddy's lap after supper and braid his beard, so there won't be any hard feeling." She liked nowadays to make her grandfather the kind of answer that would please him.
She crept away to bed as early as she could, and lay with throbbing temples against the cool white pillows in Great-grandmother's guest-chamber bed, wondering if she had written wisely to her sick brother and praying that she might have helped, not hindered, his recovery.
It was two days later that Peggy came to her with a troubled face.
"We've been having ructions over at our house," she said, "and I'm frightened. Mother and Ruth have had an awful row. I don't know how it's coming out. Mother is trying to egg Ruthie on to take Piggy for her lawful wedded. Anyhow, she claims Ruth ought to take him or leave him, with an accent on the take. Mother doesn't believe much in this soft stuff, you know. She wants everybody comfortable, without any rowing over expenses. She likes people to settle down and have large families, and large limousines, and large dinner parties, and so on. Her cry is that the country is going to the dogs, and our young men are all lame, halt, and blind from the late war, so why not pick a soft spot and let yourself down in it? She would. She wants Ruth to."
"Oh, Peggy, would you?"