a perky
animal to me for a few minutes. That condition of mind doesn't last
very long, however. I am not by nature a humble-minded person. While
it does last it is awful. Perfectly awful.

When I read Billy's letter I laid right down on the grass and put my
face deep down in it, and there wasn't anything abominable that anybody
could have said about me that I would not have agreed to. All the time
I had been furious with him for not writing as usual, he had been shut
up in a dark room, not able to see the food he was eating, much less
able to write letters, and then when they took the bandages off he
wrote so much they had to be put back again, and he was forbidden to
write more than a few lines, which accounted for so many cards. He
wouldn't let any one else write me, and I don't understand exactly how
it happened except he saw a drunken man on the street waving a pistol,
and there were some children around, and before the policeman could get
to him Billy had caught his hand and the thing had gone off and some of
the powder got in his eyes. He made light of it, but I know exactly
what he did. I thought it was a Western product that was engrossing
him, and it was the children he was trying to save. Oh, Billy, I'm a
pig! A perfectly horrid pig!

And then I suddenly thought of the astonishing letter I had written
about being in love and maybe engaged, and I prayed hard that he would
never get it; but I knew it was too late for prayers. And then I got
mad with Pat for writing to Jess about the girl from the West, and with
Jess for writing what Pat had written, and not for some time did I come
to my senses and realize I was the only person I had any right to get
mad with. I got, all right. And then I wondered what to do. Billy
said they would sail on the 21st and reach New York on the 29th, so I
decided to go back to Rose Hill and begin to pack.

Father could not come to me, so I would go to Father and be home by the
time Billy got there. It was only the 3d of September, but I decided I
would leave as soon as I could do so without remarks being made about
my going sooner than I expected, and to prevent remarks I would have to
invent a good reason for getting away. Father's loneliness would make
a perfect reason for Twickenham Town, and a most dutiful one, and no
one would be apt to ask me why I hadn't thought of his loneliness
before; but it wouldn't do for the family. They wanted me to stay out
of the