“Well, I won’t,” he said again. And he frowned and didn’t look at me. I melted. I care for him awfully and I can’t tease him long. For the sentence that always goes with the slipper and spanks is awfully true when I hurt S. K.
I slipped my arm through his and squeezed it tight against me. “Don’t you know,” I said, “that I’ll never like anyone as well as I do you, S. K. dear?” And I went on to tell him of all he’d done for me, how he’d saved me from running away from the firing-line, and made the firing-line a very pleasant place--in spots, and how much his teaching me history and helping me with my studies had helped, and how greatly his different interests had developed me. And I ended with: “If I ever do marry, you can pick out my husband.”
He fumbled for my hand, closed his around it hard, shook it, and said, with a funny little tight laugh: “It’s a go!” And then he was most awfully jolly, in a sort of excited way. I didn’t understand it then, but I liked him even more than usual, and so enjoyed the afternoon.
We had come from the Jumel Mansion, where we had seen General Washington. That is, we pretended we did. I often went to the Jumel Mansion, and S. K. sometimes went with me. I was glad, for he helped to make it, and the people who had lived in it, real to me. I had a paper to write about New York at the time of the fire, its life, development, and so on, and of course Washington came in it, and S. K.’s imagination made it get the Freshman prize. I felt mean about taking it, although he said what I had put in was original and not from him.
When I told our English teacher that Mr. Kempwood had helped me by talking facts to me, Amy was in the room, and that night she said: “You always try to be truthful, don’t you?”
I said, “Yes,” without looking at her.
Then she looked at the ring S. K. had given me, which I wear all the time. (Aunt Penelope said I could keep it because he was so much older.) “Do you think men like truthful girls?” Amy asked next. Her voice was small. I said I thought they did.
“How do they know you’re not truthful?” she asked next.
“How do you know there’s a drop of ink in a glass of water?” I counter-questioned.
“Do you think it shows?” she asked slowly.