CHAPTER VII
Father is coming to-morrow! I am so excited and happy that to-day, after I was safely out of Twickenham Town and there was no one to see me, I stood up on Skylark's back and held the bridle with one hand and waved the other in the air; and then I tried standing on one foot with the other one out, but I came near losing my balance and just did catch myself in time. Seeing a woman coming down the road in a buggy, with a baby in her lap, I got back in place before she saw what I was doing, but I needn't have done it, for it was just Mrs. Pettigrew, and she wouldn't have cared whether it was my head or my heels which were on the horse. She has eleven children and no husband to speak of, and what people do or don't do doesn't bother her. We stopped for a little talk and she told me about the roof leaking and the pig eating the baby's bonnet which Miss Katie Spain had given it last Christmas, and which was too small for its head, but was all it had; and that a kettle of soft soap had fallen off the stove and burned two toes of Sammy, the next to the youngest boy, and she would still be telling me things, but I told her Father was coming and I had to attend to something, and so she drove on.
I did have something to attend to, but I didn't attend right away, for the day was so wonderful I couldn't go in for a long time. The sunshine looked as if it had been washed and ironed, it was so clear and clean and crisp, and the wind in the trees said all sorts of lovely things to me, and I made up my mind that, no matter what happened in life, I was always going to remember that warm and sweet and sunny things are sure to come again, if at times they seem dead and buried, and that I would try not to see the cranks and queernesses of people as much as I was by nature inclined to do; and then I went right back to Miss Susanna's, and before I knew it I had said something I oughtn't, and to Mr. Willie Prince.
Every time I see Mr. Willie I thank God he is no relation of mine. He is the only man boarder in the house, which is another thing to be thankful for; but, though he is hard to stand, he is nearly sixty and a human being, and I ought to remember what I forget and yesterday I didn't remember. He was the only son of his mother and should have been a daughter, and in trying to make him one his maternal parent succeeded better than in anything else she ever attempted, Miss Bettie Simcoe says—and she ought to know, being his first cousin. His business is telling people what they don't want to hear; and, though he doesn't do any work, a hound dog couldn't run a rabbit down quicker than he can a piece of gossip, and when he isn't sitting on somebody's front porch fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan, from which he is never separated in summer, he is down at the drug-store hearing and being heard. He thinks he is handsome, and he is as proud of his pink cheeks as a goose of her gander, and I'm sure he puts something on them on cool days. If he could wear some blue ribbon on his sandy hair and have trousers and coats to match his fancy vests he would be perfectly happy. As a man he is a poor job, but as a Miss Nancy he is perfect, and when yesterday I came in from my ride he made me so mad that I popped out something I shouldn't have popped and before I knew I was going to do it.
He was sitting on the porch when I came up, fanning as hard as he could fan, and as I went by he stopped me. "I would advise you to be more careful when you go in wading at the creek, Miss Kitty," he said, "It isn't customary for young ladies in Twickenham Town to do such things and—"
"And where I came from it isn't customary for gentlemen to follow young ladies and see what they do," I said, and the minute the words were out I knew I shouldn't have said them, for his face got as red as a beet and he jumped up and walked into the house.
I don't know that he really followed Sallie Sclater, who's a visiting girl, and myself to see if we went wading, but we certainly went and had a good time doing it, though we had to dry our feet with my petticoat. But from the way his face went he must have made it convenient to walk in that direction and must have seen us, or he wouldn't have known anything about our going, as we were careful to look around before we took off our shoes and stockings. I can't endure him, but he is nearly sixty and I am only sixteen, and I shouldn't have spoken as I did; and possibly because I was so happy over Father's coming I told him last night that if I had said anything I shouldn't I hoped he would forget it and I, too, would forget what had been said. And that, of course, I knew gentlemen in Twickenham Town never did anything gentlemen shouldn't, and that my quickness of speech was always getting ahead of me; and he looked so relieved that I am perfectly certain he followed us. But, anyhow, he was very pleasant last night and told a scream of a story about poor little Miss Lily Lou Eppes when she thought she had a beau. She had almost landed him when he got away. He's never been heard from since.
CHAPTER VIII
It's over—Father's visit is. He has been gone a week, and it will be a whole month before he can come again. He has to divide up between Mother and the girls and me, and he can only get away once in two weeks, because his partner is ill and business has something the matter with it and has to be watched, which is why he could stay only four days in Twickenham Town. I don't see why fathers have to work so hard, and why wives and daughters must have so many unnecessary things, and such big houses and so many new clothes and automobiles and parties and pleasures, which aren't real fun after you have them. But most women seem to want them, and keep on scrambling for what other people scramble for, and only a few have sense enough to see how foolish it all is and stop. Maybe they are wound up so tight they can't stop. I don't know. I only know I do not want to live the life a lot of women I know live, and I am not going to do it.