The girls and Carter Brooks were talking in an undertone when I got there. I knew it was about me. And Jane came over to me and put her arm around me.
“You poor thing!” she said. “Just fight it out. We’re all with you.”
“I’m so helpless, Jane.” I put all the despair I could into my voice. For after all, if they were going to talk about my private Affairs behind my back, I felt that they might as well have something to talk about. As Jane’s second couzin once removed is in this school and as Jane will probably write her all about it, I hope this Theme is read aloud in class, so she will get it all straight. Jane is imaginative and may have a wrong idea of things.
“Don’t give in. Let them bully you. They can’t really do anything. And they’re scared. Leila is positively sick.”
“I’ve promised to write and break it off,” I said in a tence tone.
“If he really loves you,” said Jane, “the letter won’t matter.” There was a thrill in her voice. Had I not been uneasy at my deciet, I to would have thrilled.
Some fresh muffins came in just then and I was starveing. But I waved them away, and stood staring at the fire.
I am writing all of this as truthfully as I can. I am not defending myself. What I did I was driven to, as any one can see. It takes a real shock to make the average Familey wake up to the fact that the youngest daughter is not the Familey baby at seventeen. All I was doing was furnishing the shock. If things turned out badly, as they did, it was because I rather overdid the thing. That is all. My motives were perfectly ireproachible.
Well, they fell on the muffins like pigs, and I could hardly stand it. So I wandered into the den, and it occurred to me to write the letter then. I felt that they all expected me to do something anyhow.
If I had never written the wretched letter things would be better now. As I say, I overdid. But everything had gone so smoothly all day that I was decieved. But the real reason was a new set of furs. I had secured the dresses and the promise of the necklace on a Poem and a Photograph, and I thought that a good love letter might bring a muff. It all shows that it does not do to be grasping.