ement and fix everything for them and then tell them
good-by. He isn't much with words, Billy isn't. He acts. There's no
fumble in him, and even his mother, who thinks his mold was broken when
he was born and that the Lord never made but one like him, has to admit
he is a high-handed person when occasion requires. I don't agree with
his mother in a good many things concerning William, but in some I do.
I wish he wasn't an only son. An only son for a husband is hard on a
wife.

The thing I have been thinking about most since I got his cable,
however, is a certain thing that was in it. I've worn the paper out
reading it, and at first there was no argument in my mind, but it is
coming, argument is. And though I know it is a bad habit, especially
in girls and women and disliked by the other sex, how can you help it
when things are said that are not so? Billy said, "You are engaged to
me." How does he know? I never told him so. He hasn't exactly asked
me--that is, in a way that I would answer him--and he always got so
choky when on such subjects that I changed them quick, and yet he
announces that I am his, and with never so much as by your leave!

I am afraid, I'm terribly afraid, I am going to agree with him. It's a
relief to have some things settled for you, and as he imagines I will
always be falling overboard, he doubtless thinks he had better keep a
life-preserver on me in case he isn't near enough to jump in after me.
He knows if I ever agree to put one on I will keep it on. I have a
good deal of Father in me, and when I give my word I stick to it.

If any one had told me when I came to Twickenham Town that the chief
thing I would find out before I went away was that I wouldn't really
mind owning a life-preserver, my head would have gone up and I would
have been as chesty as a hen who tries to crow; and now I'm nothing but
a humble-minded person waiting for a high-handed one to come and take
me back home. And I am perfectly willing to go. Another thing I have
found out this summer is that it doesn't much matter where you are or
what you are doing; whether there is purple and fine linen or just
ancestors, or both together, or neither; if the one you want most isn't
with you, you will be pretty lonely after a while.

I have had a grand time in Twickenham Town, but I don't want to come
here again by myself. If Mrs. William Spencer Sloane wants to take her
son away with her next summer, she won't be abl