The thing in Jess's letter which made me hot was this: "What is the matter with you and Billy? Pat says (Pat is Patricia, Billy's sister) that you've been pretty horrid about writing him, and he's been blue-black at not getting letters from you; but at present he is having a good time with a very jolly girl from the West who is at their hotel. Chirp him something cheerful, Canary Bird. If I were younger or Billy older you shouldn't have him. I'd have him myself. I'm not going to stand for bad treatment of him, and if those Southern boys who make love to every pretty girl they see, and make it better than any boys on earth, have made you forget an old friend, I'm coming down and take you back home. Behave yourself, Kitty Canary, and write Billy the sort of letter we scream over up here." And then she went on with other things.
It is ridiculous in Pat to say I haven't written Billy! I have. Three long letters and three cards, and certainly he can't expect more than that, as he hasn't been gone but two months and five days; and, besides, friends ought to have such confidence in each other that they don't need letters to prove their friendship. Not a word have I had from him in more than two weeks, and if Jess thinks I am going to write him a chirp letter (which he won't have time to read if he is going around so much with a Western girl and having so much fun) she, too, thinks Wrong. That Westerner explains why I haven't heard from him for so long. It is outrageous in Billy to behave as he has been behaving. All men are alike. Every one of them. It was ignorance in me to imagine Billy was different. He isn't. The more I thought of how mistaken I had been in him the madder I got, and I just wrote a postscript to my letter and flew to the post-office with it. It seemed providential that my letter was ready to send. I hope he will read it while on one of his joyous excursions with the Western Woman, who is doubtless twenty-five, maybe thirty, and just making use of Billy, who hasn't sense enough to see it. I nearly cried my eyes out last night, before Miss Susanna came up to bed, because it was necessary to send him such a letter. Still, Billy has to learn things in life and he might as well learn them early. What I wrote was this:
Dear Billy,—I have been having such a perfectly grand time lately that it has been impossible to squeeze out a scrap in which to write you, and yet I have wanted to do so, for I am sure you will be glad to know how fearfully happy I am and what is causing the happiness. I am in love. It is the most wonderful thing I have ever been in, and thrillingly interesting. I suppose you have been in it many times, but not my way, or you would have mentioned it, just as I am doing to you, as we are such old friends, and friends have the right to know of important happenings. I hope you will like each other when you meet, for, though you are very unlike, you are both made of male material, and I have often noticed that men have many peculiarities in common. One of them is out of sight out of love, and a great readiness to be admired and entertained. He is a lawyer and couldn't be better born, though he might be better educated; still, one mustn't expect all things in one man, and his eyes are so wonderful, and he uses such poetic prose, that the lack of money and a few other lacks shouldn't count. He lives in a beautiful old house which has proud traditions and no bathrooms, and his family is one of the oldest and most disagreeable in America; still, we would not have to live with them if we were married. Nothing on earth could make me sleep under the same roof with his sisters, who are so churchy that the minister himself is subject under them. And neither would it be safe for me to be too closely associated with his mother. However, things of that sort are in the distance, which may be far or may not, and I am not thinking of immediate marriage, but just how magnificent it is to have somebody in love with you who knows how to say so in the most delicious way, and with a voice that, when the moon is out, is truly heavenly. I am telling you about it because I thought you might be interested and would like to know of my happiness; but, of course, I don't want you to tell any one else, as it is still a secret and all so indefinite that it wouldn't do to speak of it to any one but you. I am scribbling this in the middle of the night, because I can't sleep for thinking of some one, and because there is no time in the day in which to write. I hope you are having a great time. Give my love to the family and write me of your gladness at knowing of mine.
As ever,
Kitty.
Now what do you suppose made me write such slush as that? And why is a female person born with such horridness in her that she can say things that are not so with a smile in public and cry her eyes out when alone? That's what I have been doing lately, though I can't let tears have much time, for I am not by nature a crier, and they would disturb Miss Susanna at night. In my secret heart I just wrote that letter to Billy because I was indignant with him for not writing to me for more than two weeks, and I didn't intend to let him think I was sitting on a tombstone waving a willow branch in one hand and wiping tears away with the other. And, besides, I have been in love. Summer love. And it has been exciting. No one could expect me to go through life and not have but one experience in love making and hearing, and because a girl enjoys the different manners of expression it doesn't mean she is not particular about the story not being illustrated. I don't illustrate or allow illustrations, which, of course, lessens some of the thrill, but I promised Jess I would always draw the line at the right time, and I have. I have not been engaged for half a minute, and I wouldn't have added the postscript if it hadn't been for her letter and what she told me about that girl from some Western town who is no more his sort than I am her brother's. Billy is perfectly blind about some things, and has no discrimination where it is most needed. Anyhow, I added the postscript:
P.S.—By the time you get this I may be engaged. Thank you for what you would say if here.
K. C.
CHAPTER XXII
It was after I sent the letter that I got so restless I couldn't sit still, and as there was nothing I enjoyed doing I spent a good deal of my tune at the hospital with Miss Polk, who is a very splendid person, and every day I went in to see Mrs. Stafford. She is having the grandest rest, with rubs and good eats and nothing to do but be waited on and cared for, that a tired person ever had, and I am the only one who is allowed to see her, which is beyond the understanding of Twickenham Town. I'm cheerful is the reason I'm allowed to see her, the town is told, and that's enough for it to know.