“What do you mean?” I asked, and with very expressive gestures of her hands, which she had learned abroad, she exclaimed, “Now, you are not so big a softie as not to know what tumble means, and you have been graduated at Wellesley, too! You are greener than I thought, and I give it up. But you just wait till I have coached you awhile, and you’ll know what tumble means, and a good many more things of which you never dreamed.”
I said I did not like slang,—in short, that I detested it,—and we were having rather a spirited discussion on the subject, and Thea was talking in anything but a whisper, when suddenly there came a tremendous knock on the door, which in response to Thea’s prompt “Entrez” opened wide and disclosed to view the awful presence of Aunt Kizzy in her night-cap, without her false piece, felt slippers on her feet, a candle in her hand, and a look of stern disapproval on her face as she addressed herself to me, asking if I knew how late it was, and why I was keeping Thea up.
“She is not keeping me up. I am keeping her. I asked her to come in here, and when she said we should disturb you I told her we would whisper, and we have until I was stupid enough to forget myself. I’m awfully sorry, but Doris is not to blame,” Thea explained, generously defending me against Aunt Kizzy, towards whom she moved with a graceful, gliding step, adding, as she put her arm around her neck, “Now go back to bed, that’s a dear, and Doris shall go too, and we’ll never disturb you again. I wonder if you know how funny you look without your hair!”
I had never suspected Aunt Kizzy of caring much for her personal appearance, but at the mention of her hair she quickly put her hand to her head with a deprecatory look on her face, and without another word walked away, while Thea threw herself into a chair, shaking with laughter and declaring that it was a lark worthy of De Moisiere.
Four weeks have passed since I made my last entry in my journal, and so much has happened in that time that I feel as if I were years older than I was when Thea came, and, as she expressed it, “took me in hand.” I am certainly a great deal wiser than I was, but am neither the better nor the happier for it, and although I know now what tumble means, and all the flirtation signs, and a great deal more besides, I detest it all, and cannot help feeling that the girl who practices such things has lost something from her womanhood which good men prize. Old-maidish Thea calls me, and says I shall never be anything but a softie. And still we are great friends, for no one can help loving her, she is so bright and gay and kind. As for Grant, he puzzles me. I have tried to be distant towards him since Thea told me of her engagement, and once I spoke of it to him and asked why he did not tell me himself. I never knew before that Grant could scowl, as he did when he replied, “Oh, bother! there are some things a fellow does not care to talk about, and this is one of them. You and Thea gossip together quite too much.”
After that I didn’t speak to Grant for two whole days. But he made it up the third day in the summer-house where he had kissed me once, and would have kissed me again, but for an accident.
“Doris,” he said, as he took my face between his hands and bent his own so close to it that I felt his breath on my cheek,—“Doris, don’t quarrel with me. I can’t bear it. I——”
What more he would have said I do not know, as just then we heard Thea’s voice near by calling to Aleck Grady, who has been in town three weeks, stopping at the hotel, but spending most of his time at Morton Park, and I like him very much. He seems very plain-looking at first, but after you know him you forget his hair and his freckles and his hands and general awkwardness, and think only how thoroughly good-natured and kind and considerate he is, with a heap of common sense. Thea is not quite the same when he is with us. She is more quiet and lady-like, and does not use so much slang, and acts rather queer, it seems to me. Indeed, the three of them act queer, and I feel queer and unhappy, although I seem to be so gay, and the house and grounds resound with laughter and merriment all day long. Aleck comes early, and always stays to lunch, if invited, as he often is by Thea, but never by Aunt Kizzy, who has grown haggard and thin and finds a great deal of fault with me because, as she says, I am flirting with Grant and trying to win him from Thea.
It is false. I am not flirting with Grant. I am not trying to win him from Thea, but rather to keep out of his way, which I cannot do, for he is always at my side, and when we go for a walk, or a ride, or a drive, it is Aleck and Thea first, and necessarily Grant is left for me, and, what is very strange, he seems to like it, while I——Oh, whither am I drifting, and what shall I do? I know now all about the Morton lease and the Hepburn line, for Aunt Kizzy has told me, and with tears streaming down her cheeks has begged me not to be her ruin. And I will not, even if I should love Grant far more than I do now, and should feel surer than I do that he loves me and would gladly be free from Thea, who laughs and sings and dances as gayly as if there were no troubled hearts around her, while Aleck watches her and Grant and me with a quizzical look on his face which makes me furious at times. He has talked to me about the missing link and the family tree, which he offered to show me, but I declined, and said impatiently that I had heard enough about old Amos Hepburn and that wretched condition, and wished both had been in the bottom of the sea before they had done so much mischief. With a good-humored laugh he put up his family tree and told me not to be so hard on his poor old ancestor, saying he did not think either he or his condition would harm the Mortons much.