Boy of My Heart

by Marie Connor Leighton

"All right, Edward. I'll make a bargain with you. If you'll try to talk French a little every day and to read George Meredith, I'll try to like Beethoven."

But the most important fact about Edward, so far as I personally was concerned, was one which I did not take properly into account till afterwards. And that was the fact that he had a sister.

I had heard that he had one, of course. I knew that already, before Roland went to Edward's people on a visit. But then—so many boys have sisters!

My first suspicions had been aroused when the Boy had come back, and began writing letters.

It seems a funny thing to say, but I can always tell what is in people's minds when I see them write letters.

To begin with, I never feel quite comfortable when people are writing letters in the same room with me. Of course, this is really laughably childish and quite unjustifiable, but I am not by any means the only person who has the feeling. There are some people who have to get up and go out of rooms where their relatives are writing letters, lest they should deal them mortal blows over the head.

This doesn't apply to offices, of course, or to people who write business letters. I myself feel quite unperturbed when a business letter is getting written; and I always know that it's a business letter, though a guest in our house may be writing it at the opposite end of the room to where I am sitting. There is something in the air of the writer which seems to say: "I'm only writing this because I've got to. I wouldn't do it else."

But when a lot of ordinary persons sit down to write futile screeds that are not wanted, to other ordinary people who, in nine cases out of ten, couldn't tell you if they tried how the postal system is worked, they do it with an air of defiant importance which says as plainly as possible:

"Of course, you think you're the only person in the world whose correspondence matters. But you're quite mistaken. We have friends, too—most valuable friends—who absolutely insist on getting letters from us as frequently as possible. Miss Violet Smithers wrote to me yesterday—we were at a boarding-school together in Lower Norwood for three years—and I must answer her to-day. I can't help it if you want the only stamp in the house for a legal document which will become invalid if not sent to-day, and every post office within ten miles is shut under some new closing regulation. Miss Violet Smithers must have her letter."

I knew an old gentleman once who went absolutely off his head because of the immense volume of his servants' correspondence. He danced with fury on his gouty feet when he met his domestics "just going to the post, sir," and in the end he announced to me his intention of retiring to a cottage where only one servant would be necessary and he was going to advertise for her, offering fancy wages if she answered the following description: