Three dear boys are in love with me, not enough to hurt them, but enough to make me pleasure and themselves, too, all fighting together and pretending to be angry if I am more kind to one than another. Also there is always Mr. Caspian. He has now asked me what we used to call "The question"; and in America it is done to the girl herself, as we so often read, not to the father or mother. But, it seems, he spoke first to Larry, almost in the French way. When I have answered no, I was too young (that is the best to say when you are caught by surprise and wish not to offend). He told me that Larry wished me to think of him, because they had made up a big friendship, they two, and there were deep reasons why I should engage myself. I went to Larry to inquire of this, and he said he did not go so far as Mr. Caspian thought. However, it would be good for me to be nice to Mr. C. and not make him sorrow, for a time, until some things were settled. So I am being nice, but sometimes it is difficult, because Mr. Caspian and Mr. Storm are not sympathetic. Still, don't you find the little difficulties in the life are like the cloves and cinnamon in the rice pudding which we at school asked for in a "Round Robin?" (Oh, that nice word! We found it, you remember, in an English book!)
Mr. Storm drives my darling car, with which we make many dollars from our visitors who love to go on tour. I am considered too small, though I can do it quite well and have no fear. In smooth places without turns Mr. Storm lets me take the wheel. I cannot talk when I drive. I am too happy and have a thousand emotions, like a beehive filled with bees that keep flying home with honey. But he can talk, no matter what happens, and he says things I remember. They seem to paint my brain with pictures which he gives me to keep. So his words are like his eyes, not to be forgotten. You know in our garden at the convent there were flowers which would not be banished, though the gardener pulled them up by the roots again and still again: poppies for instance. Some thoughts which come to one from other people's minds are like these. They persist, and they plant their seeds in a deep place where they cannot be pulled out.
Mr. Caspian is like the gardener at the convent. He tries to stamp out these thoughts, to plant others in me. But the roots have gone down where he cannot find them.
He has come into our automobile, because his own is broken and being mended at Easthampton, where we stayed a night, and I danced with Peter Storm. I let Mr. Caspian come, instead of saying he had better go with the boys in their car, the Hippopotamus, because of Larry asking me to be nice. But I do not let him drive ever—except to-day when I am not in the car, as you shall hear. It is too pleasant having Peter by me when I have to cry, "Oh, what a lovely place!" or, "See the wonderful view!" or, "Here is a funny sight!" He has a mood which matches mine, and it would not be so with Mr. Caspian. I do not know why, but Mr. Caspian reminds me of an iron fence. You could drape him with pretty flowers, but underneath there would always be the iron fence. Perhaps Peter Storm may be a stone wall under the ivy and blossoming things. But stone is part of nature, and has beautiful colours deep in it, soaked in from sunsets and sunrises and rainbows through thousands of centuries.
All the things I see as we travel in the car—fast as a glorious strong wind which blows past the beauties of earth—all the things I see are more emphasized when I have Peter sitting by me, seeing them, too. That is why life is so wonderful. I feel things in double, as with two souls. Yet of course I am not in love. Do not think that, or you will be wrong. It is my intellect which is waking up, after it was kept in pink cotton by the Sisters; for you know learning school lessons does not wake up our intellect. It only puts on a bright polish, so by and by it can reflect the world when it's out of the cotton. And, oh, it is a sweet world, here in the country that is my home!
By and by I will tell you about the house where we are now, and a kind of mystery which gives the fairy-story effect. But you would not know what these days have been if I left out the tale of our travelling. I sent you a fat envelope of postcards, as I promised, with pictures of Easthampton: the windmills and the old houses, and the big waves. You will like the one of the long fierce wave like a white cat's paw. They call it the "sea puss." I hoped it meant that really: a giant cat that seized bathers, and people far up the beach as if they were mice running away. But Captain Winston, who loves the history as we love the bonbons, says no, they have only stolen that name for a great tidal wave which sweeps in from the sea on this side of our island. It was in Indian days but a meek little word: "seepus," small river.
"Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of memories of Indians"
The postcards of Southampton are all pictures of beautiful new houses which rich people have built among the dunes. I could not get old ones, though Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of memories of Indians and early English settlers who were jealous of the Dutch. Now it is a colony of "cottages" bigger than many of our French châteaux, and of the most unexpected, charming shapes, covered with flowers. Girls and boys who like to dance and have fun all summer like it better than Easthampton, so their mothers have to like it better, too. You will not believe when you look at the pictures that not three hundred years ago, if there had been postcards then, you would have seen only forty rough log-houses built behind palisades for fear of Indians; maybe the watch-house was where the Country Club is now! Instead of dances and parties the only pleasure was to go to church, where you were called by the roll of a drum. A stern man named Thomas Sayres beat on the drum and you had to go whether you liked or not, because Abraham Pierson, the first minister, governed the state as well as church.
I am not sure even the Indians weren't nicer to live with, because they liked beads and bright things, as we do, especially mirrors. Why, they sold anything they had for mirrors! And they were kind and pleasant till the Dutch and English spoilt their dispositions. Their parties—yes, they had parties!—were in their cornfields—oh, miles of beautiful cornfields that are covered with dark mysterious cedars now, like sad thoughts of the sunny past. The Indian families came to help each other in the cornfields, and the young men fell in love with the maidens and proposed as they do at our dances. If you said "no," perhaps they knocked you hard on your head, and took you anyhow! I am pleased it is not so now. I should not like Mr. Caspian to do it.