t's not my business. I'm sorry for both sides, and
thankful I'm not related to either. Also, I will get out of the way as
soon as possible, but until the picnic there doesn't seem a possible
way.

There is nothing in life that is not over if life is long enough, and
my little love affair with Mr. Whythe Rives Eppes belongs to the past.
Elizabeth can have him any minute she wants, and unless actions do not
speak louder than words she wants him right away, and he her. I do not
see how she is possibly going to stand his teeth. Still, there are a
great many things I do not understand in life.

The picnic is over. By giving it I brought down a good deal of comment
and criticism on my brown and curly head, but it does not matter.
Nothing except sin really matters if we have sense enough to see it. I
invited everybody in Twickenham Town that I liked to the picnic, and
some few I didn't, the latter being relations of those I did. I don't
think a person ought to be punished for their relations, any more than
being held responsible for them, and so I included them, too. What I
was criticized for was asking to the picnic quite a number of people
who don't usually go to the same places at the same time the
Historicals go, and it made talk. That night Miss Araminta Armstrong,
on the quiet, told me she knew I meant to do right, but one had to use
judgment in life, and it wasn't well to put ideas in some people's
heads. I told her I knew it, knew certain kinds of heads couldn't take
in certain ideas, one of which was that people could enjoy friendliness
and outdoorness and a lunch they didn't have to prepare for themselves,
even if they were not high-born, and as the ones referred to did not
have contagious diseases their presence wouldn't prove dangerous and
the Ancestrals needn't be uneasy. Also I told her I didn't care for
judgment as much as I ought, and if human beings knew one another
better they might find they were not as unlike as they thought. She
didn't say anything more. Neither did any one else say anything to me.
To one another they said a good deal.

It was at the picnic I had a little talk with Whythe. We went down to
a stream under a big willow-tree, and he started on the usual, but I
told him he must not say anything more to me on that subject, and if he
were the man I thought him he would not allow Elizabeth to marry the
Compensator she was no more in love with than I was. Also, I said a
few more