Now, if Shakespeare or "The Duchess" had written this story they would have pretended that Doctor Bynum came around the curve in the road at that very minute and taking off his hat said: "Nay, you shall be my wife!"
But it was only Mrs. West coming down the road, carrying a heavy crocheted shawl to keep Miss Irene from catching her death of cold! But listen! The minute we got back to the house the telephone bell rang and it was a long-distance call for Miss Irene. She knew in a second from the city it was from that Doctor Bynum was at the other end of the line. She looked at that telephone like a person in the fourth story of a house afire looks at the hook-and-ladder man.
Mr. Fairfax said well, he must be going; and we all got out on the porch while she and Doctor Bynum made up their quarrel at the rate of two dollars for the first three minutes and seventy-five cents a minute extra. (I know because father sometimes talks to that city about cotton.) And he's coming down Sunday. And Jean and I are holding our breath.
We're having the very last fire of the season to-night! A big, booming, beautiful one that makes you think winter wasn't such a bad time after all! A cold spell has come, and oh, it is so cold! It makes you wonder how it had the heart to come now and cause the flowers to feel so out of place. But it has also caused us to have another fire and I love a fire. I even like to make them, and lots of times I tell Dilsey to let me build the fire in my room myself. I sit down on the hearth and sit and sit, building that fire. Then I get to looking into it and thinking. Thinking is a mighty bad habit, like Mammy Lou says.
I can't do this any more though—for to-night we're having the last fire of the season. To-morrow spring cleaning will be gone through with and the chimneys all newspapered up. No matter how cold it gets after that you can't expect to have a fire after you've sprung cleaned! I never am going to spring clean at my house. The dust and soapsuds are not the worst part of house cleaning, though they are bad enough, goodness knows! What I hate worst to see is the battered old bureaus and shabby old quilts that you've kept a secret from the public for years pulled out from their corners by the hair of their heads and knocked around in the back yard without any pity for their poor old bones! I never see a moving van going through the city streets loaded with pitiful old furniture without thinking "That used to be somebody's Lares and Penates!"
By-the-way, Mammy Lou is crazy for Dovie to have some more twins so she can name them "Scylla and Chrybdis." She hasn't much hopes though, for she says lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Father says it wouldn't be lightning, it would be thunder to have two more little pickaninnies always standing around under his feet and have to explain to everybody that came along how they got their curious names.
Mammy Lou heard Miss Irene say "Scylla and Chrybdis;" Miss Irene doesn't say it any more though. Doctor Bynum didn't wait for the train to bring him down here that Sunday, but whizzed through the country in his automobile Saturday night. Then he "venied, vidied, vicied" in such a hurry that everybody in town knew it before nap time Sunday afternoon. Mr. Fairfax has gone away on a long trip. Jean said if he had had any sense he would have seen that Miss Irene Campbell wasn't the only girl in the world, but he didn't see it and he's gone.
Next week Jean is going home and when I think of how lonesome I'll be something nearly pops inside of me. They have been writing and writing for me to go home with Jean and stay until Rufe and Cousin Eunice and Waterloo get ready to come down this summer, but mother says I may not go unless Jean and I both promise to reform. We're not to eat any more stuffed olives nor write any more poetry—and, think of it! I'm to stop writing in my diary! Mother says I'll never have any practical sense if I don't begin now to learn things. I tell her, "Am I to blame if I love a fountain pen better than a darning needle?" The Lord made me so. And I hate sewing. It's as hard for me to sew as it is to keep from writing.
Yet if I go home with Jean I must quit writing. Must give up my diary. Must not write one line of poetry, no matter how much my head is buzzing with it! Why, if poets couldn't write their poetry they'd burst a blood vessel! I can't even take you with me to Jean's house and read over what I have written in happier days, you poor little forsaken diary!