"I feel like I oughtn't to be wasting my time telling about my friends when there are all these wonderful lights and carpets and decorations and conveniences, so much more interesting. Whenever you want hot water, instead of bringing a bucketful from the spring and building a fire and sitting down to watch it simmer, you just turn a handle and out it comes, smoking; and whenever you want ice-water, you touch a button and give a boy ten cents.
"The funny thing to me is that Annabel and Mr. Compton both think they HAVE to marry somebody rich, or not marry at all. They really don't know they COULD marry each other, because imagining they would be unable to keep the wolf from the door. That's because they can't imagine themselves living behind anything but a door on one of the 'best streets.' We know, don't we, Brick and Bill, that it takes mighty little to keep the coyote from the dugout! And there's something else we know that these people haven't dreampt of—that there's happiness and love in many and many a dugout. I don't know what's behind the doors on the 'best streets.'
"We are not going straight on to Chicago. A gentleman has invited the Sellimers, which of course includes me, to a house-party in the country not far from Kansas City. He is a very rich man of middle age, so they tell me, a widower, who is interested in our sex and particularly in Annabel Sellimer. Mr. Edgerton Compton isn't invited. You see, he's a sort of rival—a poor rival. This middle-aged man has known the Sellimers a long time, and he has been trying to win Annabel for a year or two. If it hadn't been for Mr. Compton she'd have married HIS HOUSE before now, I gather. The house is said to be immense, in a splendid estate near the river. I am all excitement when I think of going there for ten days. There are to be fifty guests and the other forty-nine are invited as a means of getting Annabel under his roof. Won't I feel like a little girl in an old English novel! The best of it is that nobody will bother ME—I'm too poor to be looked at a second time, I mean, what THEY call poor. Sometimes I laugh when I'm alone, for I feel like I'm a gold mine filled with rich ore that nobody has discovered. Remember the 'fool's gold' we used to see among the granite mountains? I think the gold that lies on the surface must always be fool's gold. The name of the country-house we are to visit is the same as that of the man who owns it—"
Wilfred Compton held the letter closer to the light.
Brick Willock spoke impatiently: "No use to stare at that there word—we couldn't make it out. I guess she got it wrong, first, then wrote it over. Just go ahead."
Bill suggested, "I think the first letter is an 'S.'"
Wilfred scrutinized the name closely.
"Besides," said Willock, "we knows none of them high people, the name wouldn't be nothing to us—and her next letter will likely have it more'n once."
Wilfred resumed the letter: "I must tell you good-by, now, for Annabel's maid has come to help me dress for dinner, and it takes longer than it did to do up the washing, at the cove; and is more tiresome. But I like it. I like these fine, soft, beautiful things. I like the big world, and I would like to live in it forever and ever, if you could bring the dugout and be near enough for me to run in, any time of the day. I wish I could run in this minute and tell you the thousands and thousands of things I'll never have time to write.
"Your loving, adoring, half-homesick, half-bewildered, somewhat dizzy little girl,
"Lahoma.