e her back her beau.
I felt truly Virginian in doing it, for Virginians always say, when
giving you something, that they don't want it; I certainly didn't want
Whythe. I wouldn't have known what to do with him after the summer was
over, and I was conscious of great relief in getting him off my hands
without further loss or trouble. I couldn't tell Elizabeth this, of
course, though there were times when it took a good deal of something I
did not know I had to keep from doing so. Also, it took more strength
to keep several other things to myself than I knew I possessed. It
took praying and the end of the sheet to do it, but I did it, and I'm
getting encouraged about K. C.

What encourages me is this: Two nights after the picnic Elizabeth came
to my room and asked if she might have a little talk with me, as she
felt she ought to. I told her she could, and she sat down and began.
Miss Susanna was back in her own quarters, the people from Florida
having gone, and I had just finished saying my prayers and was ready to
hop into bed when Elizabeth knocked at my door. I knew what was coming
from the look on her face and her manner of walking, and the way she
held her head.

If ever I write that book I am always thinking about I am going to put
Elizabeth in it as well as Miss Araminta Armstrong, and if I could get
some men to match them I would have some corking characters to begin
with. But no kind of pen-and-ink picture of Elizabeth would do her
justice. Her sweetness of speech when she is particularly nasty is
beyond the power of human portrayal. I got in bed quick when she said
she wanted to talk, because I was afraid I might have to hit something,
and the pillow was the only thing I could manage without sound. I put
it where I could give it a dig when politeness required control, and
told her to go ahead.

In her last sleep Elizabeth will pose. She took her seat near the
window where the moonlight could shine on her (she looked very pretty
in her pink-silk kimono, a hand-over from her rich aunt, and shabby but
becoming in color), and for a moment she didn't say anything, just
fooled with the pink ribbon on her hair. And then she said she had a
secret to tell me; said it so soft, with her head on the side, that I
had to ask her to speak louder please, and I got nearer the edge of the
bed. Elbow on it and chin in the palm of one hand, I prayed hard to be
polite in my own room, and reached out for an end of the