"If I pleased you all I am glad."
So many calls as we had the next day, and so many invitations as there are now on our table for Mrs. Wilford Cameron, while our opera box between the scenes is packed with beaus, until one would suppose Wilford might be jealous; but Katy takes it all so quietly and modestly, seeming only gratified for his sake, that I really believe he enjoys it more than she does. At all events, he persists in her going, even when she would rather stay at home, so if she is spoiled, the fault will rest with him.
February—th.—Poor Katy. Dissipation is beginning to wear upon her, for she is not accustomed to our late hours, and sometimes falls asleep while Esther is dressing her. But go she must, for Wilford wills it so, and she is but an automaton to do his bidding.
Why can't mother let her alone, when everybody seems so satisfied with her? Somehow, she does not believe that people are as delighted as they pretend, and so she keeps training and tormenting her until I do not wonder that Katy sometimes hates to go out, lest she shall unconsciously be guilty of an impropriety. I pitied her last night, when, after she was ready for the opera, she came into my room, where I was indulging in the luxury of a loose dressing gown, with my feet on the sofa. Latterly she has taken to me, and now sitting down before the fire into which her blue eyes looked with a steady stare, she said:
"I wish I might stay here with you to-night. I have heard this opera before, and it will be so tiresome. I get so sleepy while they are singing, for I never care to watch the acting. I did at first, when it was new, but now it seems insipid to see them make-believe, while the theatre is worse yet," and she gave a weary yawn.
In less than three months she has exhausted fashionable life, and I looked at her in astonishment, asking what would please her if the opera did not. What would she like?
Turning her eyes full upon me, she exclaimed:
"I do like it some, I suppose, only I get so tired. I like to ride, I like to skate, I like to shop, and all that; but, oh, you don't know how I want to go home to mother and Helen. I have not seen them for so long, but I am going in the spring—going in May. How many days are there in March and April? Sixty-one," she continued; "then I may safely say that in eighty days I shall see mother, and all the dear old places. It is not a grand home like this. You, Bell, might laugh at it. Juno would, I am sure, but you do not know how dear it is to me, or how I long for a sight of the huckleberry hills and the rocks where Helen and I used to play, Helen is a darling sister, and I know you will like her."
Just then Will called to say the carriage was waiting, and Katy was driven away, while I sat thinking of her and the devoted love with which she clings to her home and friends, wondering if it were the kindest thing which could have been done, transplanting her to our atmosphere, so different from her own.
March 1st.—As it was in the winter, so it is now; Mrs. Wilford Cameron is the rage—the bright star of society—which quotes and pets and flatters, and even laughs at her by turns; and Wilford, though still watchful, lest she should do something _outré_, is very proud of her, insisting upon her accepting invitations, sometimes two for one evening, until the child is absolutely worn out, and said to me once, when I told her how well she was looking and how pretty her dress was: "Yes, pretty enough, but I am so tired. If I could lie down on mother's bed, in a shilling calico, just as I used to do!"