Dear Jean:
All I can say is, I wish you were here, and I don't see how I am going to stop saying that and write anything else. Letters are such cold and far-away things. I hope you do know how I love you, and how the thought of you comforts me. I told you about Faith, Hope, and Charity. Well, there they stand grinning above me, and they don't offer much consolation.
I am in trouble, Jean. I can tell you this much. Ruth Farraday is going to marry Mr. Chambers, and she was Buddy's girl. I can't tell you the ins and outs of it, because they are other people's different secrets, but I am afraid that this will kill Buddy, and I don't see one single thing to do about it. I feel like a criminal and a German spy, to tell you even this much, but I feel as if I should burst with grief—really burst. You know that feeling of suffocating you get after you have eaten a lot too much. I have that same feeling emotionally. I know this is a funny way to say it, but it's the only way I can express it. I wish we could be together, and I could hear you reading poetry or something soothing, and you could help me think how to break it to Buddy. It will have to be told him. After I write you, I am going to write him. So you see how much I value writing to you.
I will answer your questions some other time, when my mind is more free. Though I can only doubt if that time will ever come. I wish you could see Ruth Farraday. There is something about her that makes me think of the girl in the "First Violin," though she isn't in the least like her. I don't know what it is. I guess it is the sadness that hangs about that book. There is a sadness hanging about her, and about me, too, Jeanie-that-I-love.
I am glad your friend Neil Seymour is at the Point. I liked him very much. If he still wants to send me "Prometheus Bound," he may, Mother says. I guess she thinks anything that will keep me contented is a good idea. I think "Prometheus Bound" would help me, if it is anything like what I think it is.
When I write you, I feel a little as if I were right in the room with you. What I am doing now is to hang onto the door, not to have to shut it, and go into another room, where my sick Buddy is. Life is a strange thing. Good-bye—good-bye—good-bye. I love you—hard.
That old-fashioned girl, Elspeth.
My Dear Brother:
I have got to use my own judgment about writing to you. I am to blame for writing you the way I did, but I did not know any better at that time. I only told you the truth. Now I have more truth to tell you. Buddy, will you brace up as if you were in the trenches again? You are a soldier, you know, and you've got to fight another battle.
Mother said I was not to tell you anything that might trouble you, but I have got to trouble you the worst of all. Buddy, Ruth Farraday is engaged to marry that goop, and her family have egged her on till she did not know which way to turn, and has turned this way. She told me and her family, and her face looked like death. I am not making this up. Peggy says so, and she knows. She loves Ruthie with all her heart, and she would not make anything up. She is not that kind. I am more that kind, but this is really and truly so. Ruth is not a happy girl, and we both know it. She has lost her lovely pink cheeks, and is a white apple blossom now. A pear blossom is more like it, only not pretty enough for her.
Well, Buddy, I have never had any real, grown-up trouble, but the kind of fourteen-year-old trouble I have had has seemed pretty hard sometimes. Grandmother says that you've always got to live, whether you can or not. I know you don't want my condolences, but I love you so that I can't help being sick over this. It's hard work for me to eat and sleep. I hope you can swear a little, because that will help you.
Sister.
"I don't feel very much like going to Swan Pond crabbing," she thought, as she sealed her two letters, and set them before her on the desk, "but I suppose people mustn't give up to things. Even if my heart is breaking, the Robbins boy and his cousin and Peggy ought not to have their plans spoiled."
She made her way through the chain of little rooms between her den and her sleeping chamber, unfastening, as she went, the blue linen gown, buttoned all the way down the back, that, with its pink twin, was her regular morning uniform. In her bed room she slipped into a blouse cut like a boy's, and dark blue woollen bloomers with wool stockings to match. With this she put on, very carefully, a blue tam o' shanter. She saw in the glass that her face was drawn, and her eyes had dark shadows beneath them.
"If Tom Robbins notices how I look and asks me any questions, I shall only tell him that I am in deep trouble," she thought. "I won't say anything like that to Bill. He would only grin and be embarrassed, but I think Tom Robbins would understand more about grief."
She was a little ashamed of having thought so much of her own trouble when she saw Peggy's stricken face.
"Don't ask me what has happened," Peggy whispered, as they clambered into the car and Grandfather started for the cross-roads where they were to pick up the two boys. "I don't know what hasn't happened. Ruth has shut herself into her room, after some sort of a tragic heart-to-heart talk with Father, and Mother and Father are scarcely speaking, and the cook is mad, and ruined the breakfast muffins and gave us bad eggs, or baddish eggs, for breakfast, and Sister won't see me. Piggy sent her a huge box of flowers this morning. I've got to stop calling him Piggy and call him Albert, I suppose. Wouldn't you know his name would be Albert? Isn't he the most Albertish person? Elizabeth, I never hated anybody so much in all my life. He never did me any harm, but I would be pleased and proud to—to choke him to death."
"So would I," sighed Elizabeth.
"Wasn't it funny, her getting that telegram from your brother just when she did? Sometimes I think she was keen on your brother, and sort of peeved because he didn't ever write to her when he got back. You don't suppose she'd get herself engaged to Piggy just out of pride, do you?"