"You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of The
Complete Letter Writer. There was not a bit of you in it."
"Well, that is why I dislike your book—because there was not a bit of you in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot about."
"Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You should be pleased."
"To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear? —You did nicer things than write books'—and he did …. I hear many things of you…."
"Oh, well!" I brilliantly retorted, "you mustn't believe all you hear."
And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed.
"Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with you by the people who care for you?—and one of them dislikes pottage. Indeed, I would have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great length of liking you,—because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear, you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with pottage…."
The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just twice as petulant as I was already.
"Now, please don't preach," I said. "I've heard so much preaching lately—dear," I added, though I am afraid the word was rather obviously an afterthought.
"Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of her death."
"Really!" It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw, but it served.