All these mutterings of Beverley—during one of the gambols in Tilly's parlours, which he naturally reserves for me—all these fragmentary expressions relate to real people and to actual things that you and Tilly have never known anything about.
Men must not bother their women by telling them everything. That, by the way, has been an old bone of contention between you and me, Polly, my chosen rib—a silent bone, but still sometimes, I fear, a slightly rheumatic bone. But when will a woman learn that her heavenly charm to a man lies in the thought that he can place her and keep her in a world, into which his troubles cannot come. Thus he escapes from them himself. Let him once tell his troubles to her and she becomes the mirror of them—and possibly the worst kind of mirror.
Beverley has told Tilly nothing of all this entanglement with ferns, I have not told you. All four of us have thereby been the happier.
But through Tilly's misunderstanding those two mischief-making charlatans, Marigold and Mullen, have now come into the case; and it is of the utmost importance that I deal with these two gentlemen at once; to that end I cut this letter short and start after them.
Oh, but why did you go away without good-bye?
BEN.
BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES
June 5, 1912.
DEAR POLLY:
I go on where I left off yesterday.