However, obstacles only stimulated Sidney. “I know,” she wrote furiously, “I’ll pick out one of them and talk about her all the time and wish and wish in my heart and just make something happen. Now, which one, dear Dorothea, is the important thing for me to decide.”
From point of romance Vick offered the most possibilities—there was so much about Vick to talk about. But Mr. Dugald did not seem Vick’s sort. Vick liked what she called “smooth” men and Mr. Dugald was most certainly not that. And, anyway, Vick would simply have to have a rich man to give her all the things she said she intended having and Mr. Dugald was not rich or he’d have more fashionable clothes. No, Vick was out of it. Isolde—well, he wasn’t Issy’s sort, either. Sidney did not know just what Issy’s sort was like but she did not think it was like Mr. Dugald. Anyway, she did not want Issy to have him. She wanted Trude to have him, dear old peachy Trude who had never had any beau except her Lost Love.
“I shall talk about dear Trude and all her nice points. I shall even say she is beautiful for she is in the eyes of love and I like to talk about Trude, anyway. So from this day forth I shall gather the threads of Destiny into my white hands and weave a beautiful pattern of love and happiness.”
Forthwith Sidney began her weaving and found it amazingly easy. She talked through supper about Trude and took it as a promising sign that Mr. Dugald himself asked her all sorts of questions as though he “thirsted” to know more. And Sidney answered generously. She walked with him after supper to the postoffice in order to talk more about Trude. The next day she produced a very unflattering snapshot of Trude and left it on the kitchen table and later gloated in secret over its disappearance, though of course Aunt Achsa might have burned it up in her tireless cleaning and straightening.
After that Trude’s name crossed the conversation of the little family frequently and quite naturally. Mr. Dugald called her “Truda” and knew that she was staying with the Whites on Long Island and that she was the prop of the entire Romley family and never thought of herself at all and that she wasn’t as pretty as Vick or Isolde but really, nicer—Sidney quite opened her heart. And then one morning when she was helping Mr. Dugald clean his brushes she told him of Trude’s Lost Love. Not much about it for the reason that she herself knew only a little and also because a strange look went suddenly over Mr. Dugald’s face.
“Put on the brakes, little sister. Aren’t you letting me into secrets that perhaps your Trude would not want me to know?”
Sidney’s face flamed. She knew Mr. Dugald was right. “Oh, I should not have told you. I—just got started and didn’t think. Can’t you forget what I said as though I didn’t say it?” she pleaded.
“I’ll forget what you said,” Mr. Dugald promised, knowing perfectly well that he could not and from that day on he never asked any more questions of Sidney concerning her family.
“I’m not playing fair,” he said to himself but not to her.
To “Dorothea” Sidney confided her chagrin. “I didn’t say much—just that Trude had had one heartbreaking affair with a man she met at Mrs. White’s and that I didn’t believe she’d gotten over it yet. I read a book once where it said pity was akin to love and I thought if Mr. Dugald knew that Trude’s heart was broken he would feel very sorry for her. But he looked so embarrassed that I knew I had not been maidenly as Isolde would say and I blushed furiously. He promised to forget it and I think he will. But, oh, perhaps I have defeated my dear purpose for now when I speak of Trude he looks funny as though he was afraid of what I was going to say next. I am in despair.”