“Oh, you know without the telling! He ought to be headstrong and masterful and a—a bold robber when it comes to claiming favours from his lady; and full of mock repentance after the theft.”
“Well, when Billy comes from the war, I shall give him a hint as to how to mend his behaviour.”
“An you did, I should hate you. Why, he does not even know how to write to a girl. Here is a letter from him in which he sends his duty to his mother—did you ever hear of such idiocy? A love-letter with a message like that! A love letter should be private and confidential, filled full of such sweetness that one pair of eyes alone should read it; and he sends his duty to his mother, forsooth! Why, that prying old creature would insist upon reading every line written here if I gave her the message—and Heaven knows she might, and be none the wiser, for all of sentiment there is in it is this last sentence, ‘I would send you my love, an I dared; but I would not for the world make you angry or hurt your maidenly modesty.’ Now that is a love-letter for you!”
“Well, it is not deliriously passionate,” admitted Joscelyn.
“It is deliriously idiotic. I’d just have him understand that my modesty is not quite so thin-skinned as he imagines.”
Joscelyn fell back in her chair, shrieking with laughter, while the yellow-headed tempest before the glass shook her curls, and emphasized her words with a scouting gesture, “Why, Joscelyn, if I were that boy’s great-grandmother, he could not treat me with more deferential respect.”
“I think it is beautiful in him.”
“Beautiful! Well, I think it is imbecile! Hurt my maidenly modesty, indeed!—one would think my modesty were a sore toe to be stubbed or trod upon. Stop laughing, Joscelyn Cheshire; you are as stupid as Billy.” And when Joscelyn answered with another silvery peal, Janet, in high indignation, flung out of the room and down the steps, her heels clattering as she went; and the next morning her maid carried the offending letter to Mistress Bryce with a sweetly worded note, saying Billy had no doubt made a mistake in the address of his missive. And Billy swore his first oath when he heard of it.
Nor was Janet the only one who came to confessional in Joscelyn’s room. It was there that Betty found the only outlet for her secret joy. In spite of the war and its sad consequences, the year had been such a happy one—the sweetest year she had ever known; for it had been full of dreams and fancies, of thrills and hopes. Even the self-reproach, with which she sometimes tormented herself because of her mother, had in it a touch of sweetness since it was linked with her love. The whole world was as a new place; the winter snows held an unthought of revelation of beauty, and each flower that budded to the spring sunshine was a fresh creation bearing on its petals an unspelled message of love. She would not write to Eustace, for that would be undutiful to her mother; but Joscelyn’s letters were filled with tender messages for her, with now and then a little wafered note that burnt her fingers with a delicious sense of forbidden fruit, and which she read and re-read in the privacy of her white-curtained room, trembling and flushing at the story they told,—the future they painted.