Kitty Canary: A Novel

by Kate Langley Bosher

If I am ever really and truly engaged I wonder if I will be as particular as a sixteen-year-old person, a girl person, ought to be? I guess it will depend on whom I am engaged to, but, of course, not being in love, I couldn't be engaged, and there is no use in thinking what I might do under circumstances that might warrant the doing of it, and when I see Billy I will just shake hands; that is—

Every time I think of his coming I feel like opening my arms so wide I could take the whole world in, but I don't open them. I just go look at the calendar to see if another day hasn't gone by yet. When this morning I saw it was the 14th and realized there wasn't but one more day to wait, I went to the window and did open my arms, and I sent a message into the air. And then, because I felt so sorry for Miss Araminta Armstrong, who has nothing to wait for but older age, and for Miss Bettie Simcoe, who has long since stopped hoping, I went down-stairs and asked them if they wouldn't like to motor to Glade Springs, and they said they would, and we went. Also Mr. Willie Prince. I didn't want to ask him, but I couldn't leave him out, and of course he wanted to go. The going made the day pass a little quicker, but it has been a long day! Awful long!

For the last week I have been going around to almost every house in town to say good-by. I don't know the exact day I will leave, as that will depend on when Mother says I must be home; but I didn't want to go away and not say good-by to everybody and tell them what a good time I have had, and I started telling very soon after I got Billy's message saying he was coming. I have thanked everybody for their niceness and kindness to me, and told every one I hope to come back next summer, and sometimes we have had little weeps, for they put their arms around me and held me so tight I could hardly breathe. And I know now there is nothing as good as friendliness, and loving-kindness is more to be desired than all things else on earth, and I am going to try to make it grow wherever I live. I will have a garden of it—have it in my heart.

I am afraid I will always have some practical things in my heart, too, for of late I've been thinking about all that money Billy had to spend in cabling me from Europe. When Billy wants to do a thing he never lets obstacles stand in his way, and he would have sent that cable if he'd had to borrow the money from the Bank of England at an awful rate of interest. What he did do I guess was to get it from his mother. She would take her head off and her heart out and hand both over if he wanted them, and it isn't her fault that William, as she calls him, isn't a ruined person.

I know she hated him to leave ahead of time, which he had to do to get here on the 15th, the rest not sailing, Jess says, until the 20th; but that's William again. He doesn't waste time when he has anything to attend to, and I know exactly what he said to his mother. He will make every arrangement and fix everything for them and then tell them good-by. He isn't much with words, Billy isn't. He acts. There's no fumble in him, and even his mother, who thinks his mold was broken when he was born and that the Lord never made but one like him, has to admit he is a high-handed person when occasion requires. I don't agree with his mother in a good many things concerning William, but in some I do. I wish he wasn't an only son. An only son for a husband is hard on a wife.

The thing I have been thinking about most since I got his cable, however, is a certain thing that was in it. I've worn the paper out reading it, and at first there was no argument in my mind, but it is coming, argument is. And though I know it is a bad habit, especially in girls and women and disliked by the other sex, how can you help it when things are said that are not so? Billy said, "You are engaged to me." How does he know? I never told him so. He hasn't exactly asked me—that is, in a way that I would answer him—and he always got so choky when on such subjects that I changed them quick, and yet he announces that I am his, and with never so much as by your leave!

I am afraid, I'm terribly afraid, I am going to agree with him. It's a relief to have some things settled for you, and as he imagines I will always be falling overboard, he doubtless thinks he had better keep a life-preserver on me in case he isn't near enough to jump in after me. He knows if I ever agree to put one on I will keep it on. I have a good deal of Father in me, and when I give my word I stick to it.

If any one had told me when I came to Twickenham Town that the chief thing I would find out before I went away was that I wouldn't really mind owning a life-preserver, my head would have gone up and I would have been as chesty as a hen who tries to crow; and now I'm nothing but a humble-minded person waiting for a high-handed one to come and take me back home. And I am perfectly willing to go. Another thing I have found out this summer is that it doesn't much matter where you are or what you are doing; whether there is purple and fine linen or just ancestors, or both together, or neither; if the one you want most isn't with you, you will be pretty lonely after a while.

I have had a grand time in Twickenham Town, but I don't want to come here again by myself. If Mrs. William Spencer Sloane wants to take her son away with her next summer, she won't be able to do it. Her son will be twenty-one next summer, and though I hope he will always be respectful and obedient, as far as possible, to his mother's wishes, still, she will have to remember there are other wishes in this world besides hers. I trust she will be nice about the discovery. Mrs. Sloane is a very handsome woman, but spoiled. And very fond of having her own way.

We are not apt to have much money, Billy and I. We have often said we thought young people ought to do their own scrambling, and I think that's what we'll have to do, as our fathers think much the same way. I'm not fond of herbs, but I can stand a dinner of them if Billy can, and besides, it will be nice for us to work up together and not have too quick a shove. And another thing we agree about. We know the thing that counts most, and we are going to keep a good deal of it on hand. Father says neither poverty nor riches can kill love if it is the right sort. I know Billy's is the right sort, but I am crazy to hear him put it into words.