I don’t think Mellicent’s real heart is affected in the least—she’s only eighteen, remember—but her pride is. And her mother—! Mrs. Jane is thoroughly angry as well as mortified. She says Mellicent is every whit as good as those Pennocks, and that the woman who would let a paltry thing like money stand in the way of her son’s affections is a pretty small specimen. For her part, she never did have any use for rich folks, anyway, and she is proud and glad that she’s poor! I’m afraid Mrs. Jane was very angry when she said that. However, so much for her—and she may change her opinion one of these days.
My private suspicion is that young Pennock is already repentant, and is pulling hard at his mother’s leading-strings; for I was with Mellicent the other day when we met the lad face to face on the street. Mellicent smiled and nodded casually, but Pennock—he turned all colors of the rainbow with terror, pleading, apology, and assumed indifference all racing each other across his face. Dear, dear, but he was a sight!
There is, too, another feature in the case. It seems that a new family by the name of Gaylord have come to town and opened up the old Gaylord mansion. Gaylord is a son of old Peter Gaylord, and is a millionaire. They are making quite a splurge in the way of balls and liveried servants, and motor cars, and the town is agog with it all. There are young people in the family, and especially there is a girl, Miss Pearl, whom, report says, the Pennocks have selected as being a suitable mate for Carl. At all events the Pennocks and the Gaylords have struck up a furious friendship, and the young people of both families are in the forefront of innumerable social affairs—in most of which Mellicent is left out.
So now you have it—the whole story. And next month comes to Mellicent’s father one hundred thousand dollars. Do you wonder I say the plot thickens?
As for myself—you should see me! I eat whatever I like. (The man who says health biscuit to me now gets knocked down—and I’ve got the strength to do it, too!) I can walk miles and not know it. I’ve gained twenty pounds, and I’m having the time of my life. I’m even enjoying being a genealogist—a little. I’ve about exhausted the resources of Hillerton, and have begun to make trips to the neighboring towns. I can even spend an afternoon in an old cemetery copying dates from moss-grown gravestones, and not entirely lose my appetite for dinner—I mean, supper. I was even congratulating myself that I was really quite a genealogist when, the other day, I met the real thing. Heavens, Ned, that man had fourteen thousand four hundred and seventy-two dates at his tongue’s end, and he said them all over to me. He knows the name of every Blake (he was a Blake) back to the year one, how many children they had (and they had some families then, let me tell you!), and when they all died, and why. I met him one morning in a cemetery. I was hunting for a certain stone and I asked him a question. Heavens! It was like setting a match to one of those Fourth-of-July flower-pot sky-rocket affairs. That question was the match that set him going, and thereafter he was a gushing geyser of names and dates. I never heard anything like it.
He began at the Blaisdells, but skipped almost at once to the Blakes—there were a lot of them near us. In five minutes he had me dumb from sheer stupefaction. In ten minutes he had made a century run, and by noon he had got to the Crusades. We went through the Dark Ages very appropriately, waiting in an open tomb for a thunderstorm to pass. We had got to the year one when I had to leave to drive back to Hillerton. I’ve invited him to come to see Father Duff. I thought I’d like to have them meet. He knows a lot about the Duffs—a Blake married one, ’way back somewhere. I’d like to hear him and Father Duff talk—or, rather, I’d like to hear him try to talk to Father Duff. Did I ever write you Father Duff’s opinion of genealogists? I believe I did.
I’m not seeing so much of Father Duff these days. Now that it’s grown a little cooler he spends most of his time in his favorite chair before the cook stove in the kitchen.
Jove, what a letter this is! It should be shipped by freight and read in sections. But I wanted you to know how things are here. You can appreciate it the more—when you come.
You’re not forgetting, of course, that it’s on the first day of November that Mr. Stanley G. Fulton’s envelope of instructions is to be opened.
As ever yours,
John Smith.