derstand is that
if people want to be loved--and everybody does--why in the name of
goodness don't they do a little loving on their own account? You
needn't expect to get what you don't give. I'm glad I was born with a
taste for liking, though I don't like every one, by a jugful. When I
come across a righteous hypocrite I get out of the way, if it isn't
convenient to make the hypocrite get out of mine. There are some
people I could never congeal with and I am never even going to try.

CHAPTER XIX

I wonder what made me waste time thinking about Miss Bettie Simcoe and
human peculiarities when I started to say something about sitting under
the trees with Whythe at the MacLean party, but, born a rambler, I will
ramble unto death, and there's no use wasting time lamenting natural
deficiencies. Whythe, of course, couldn't very conveniently make
personal remarks, as people were passing pretty close, though he did
say I looked like a dream, which I did not, being too brown for a
dream; but I did look real nice. I fished out one of the party dresses
Mother made Clarissa put in my trunk, which I haven't worn since I have
been here, and I suppose it suited my brownness, as it was creamy and
stuck out in the silly way skirts stick now, and it was new-fashioned
enough to make everybody look at it and nudge a little. Whythe thought
it was lovely, and told me so sixteen times, which was tiresome, and
then I saw he was watching Elizabeth, who was on the porch with her new
beau and did not know really whether my dress was blue or pink. The
only thing he was thinking of was that not far from him was a
superseder in possession of something which was once his. Whythe
doesn't like to be superseded in anything affecting his personal
estimate of himself.

The Lord certainly let loose a lot of contradictions when he started
the human race. When I saw the way Whythe was watching Elizabeth, and
remembered how she had looked at him when he passed her a few minutes
before, I knew two specimens of a common variety were before me, and I
made up a parable as I watched them watch each other. The two
specimens had been in love and been engaged. They had a fuss. The
engagement was broken. She was mad, and he was mad, and each thought
the other would make the first advance to own up and make up; but
before it could be done a young person appeared and distracted
temporarily the attention of the man, and the girl went away to see
w