"So you're satisfied with yourself?" Rufe teased.
"Far from it," I denied, "but I am certainly satisfied with the amount of schooling in schools I've had. Ugh, I hate the thought of it!"
"But how can you ever amount to anything without an education?" mother persisted.
"Never fear," I assured her easily. "I'll amount to my destiny, no matter whether I've ever seen inside a school or not. When I was a child I always imagined I was cut out to be Somebody; and even now I occasionally have a notion that Fate is watching me through her lorgnette!"
"You and Jean Everett used to have such queer ideas about yourselves—with your notions of marrying dukes and living in castles, and all that kind of thing," Cousin Eunice said, after a moment of amused thought.
"Jean still has her notions," Rufe broke in. "Our city editor is out of his depth in love with her and I met her on the street the other day and tried to bespeak her pity for the poor fellow. She assured me that the man she married would be so important the papers would all get out an extra every time his assassination was attempted!"
"Well, she'd better decide to take Guilford then," I said warmly, for it is a source of great satisfaction to me that my old friend, Jean (still my best friend), is half-engaged to Guilford Houghton, a grave young lawyer who is already making people take notice. He is a very quiet, dignified young man, so tall and thin and straight that he reminds me of a silk umbrella carefully rolled.
For a long time Jean seemed not to care much about him, but he kept paying his court as persistently as a fly in wet weather until she was finally won—half-way. He has very methodical ways, and calls to see her only on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, but she devotes so much time and care to her toilet for hours and hours preceding these visits that we call them her "days of purification."
"Guilford is not so showy, maybe," she said to me one time, in explanation of her fondness for him, which she tries hard to conceal, "but he's so dependable. That's worth a lot to a girl who has been engaged to four or five Apollos, all of them about as reliable as drop-stitch stockings!"
"For my part, I admire Jean's ambition," father spoke up, although none of us suspected that he was listening to our rambling talk. "I'd rather see a girl with an ambition like that than one with none at all—one of these little empty-headed gigglers whose age of Eve announces its arrival by all the i's in her name being changed into y's."