times of late he has told me he doesn't understand me. He does not.
And never will.

The thing in Jess's letter which made me hot was this: "What is the
matter with you and Billy? Pat says (Pat is Patricia, Billy's sister)
that you've been pretty horrid about writing him, and he's been
blue-black at not getting letters from you; but at present he is having
a good time with a very jolly girl from the West who is at their hotel.
Chirp him something cheerful, Canary Bird. If I were younger or Billy
older you shouldn't have him. I'd have him myself. I'm not going to
stand for bad treatment of him, and if those Southern boys who make
love to every pretty girl they see, and make it better than any boys on
earth, have made you forget an old friend, I'm coming down and take you
back home. Behave yourself, Kitty Canary, and write Billy the sort of
letter we scream over up here." And then she went on with other things.

It is ridiculous in Pat to say I haven't written Billy! I have. Three
long letters and three cards, and certainly he can't expect more than
that, as he hasn't been gone but two months and five days; and,
besides, friends ought to have such confidence in each other that they
don't need letters to prove their friendship. Not a word have I had
from him in more than two weeks, and if Jess thinks I am going to write
him a chirp letter (which he won't have time to read if he is going
around so much with a Western girl and having so much fun) she, too,
thinks Wrong. That Westerner explains why I haven't heard from him for
so long. It is outrageous in Billy to behave as he has been behaving.
All men are alike. Every one of them. It was ignorance in me to
imagine Billy was different. He isn't. The more I thought of how
mistaken I had been in him the madder I got, and I just wrote a
postscript to my letter and flew to the post-office with it. It seemed
providential that my letter was ready to send. I hope he will read it
while on one of his joyous excursions with the Western Woman, who is
doubtless twenty-five, maybe thirty, and just making use of Billy, who
hasn't sense enough to see it. I nearly cried my eyes out last night,
before Miss Susanna came up to bed, because it was necessary to send
him such a letter. Still, Billy has to learn things in life and he
might as well learn them early. What I wrote was this:

_Dear Billy,--I have been having such a perfectly grand time lately
that it has bee