ck and
rock if in a chair, and swing and swing if in a hammock, until she has
said a good many nasty things, and then I get up and go up-stairs and
bring down a box of candy Whythe has sent me and offer it to her with
my most Christian forgiveness and most understanding smile, and,
strange to say, she never takes a piece!

I don't mind her remarks. They're natural, and if she wasn't such a
horrid little teapot I'd do anything I could to straighten out things;
but until she behaves herself I won't. I am having a very interesting
time being in love, and why should I stop just because a man she broke
with isn't grieving, but is keeping himself in practice saying to me
what he used to say to her? I am not going to stop until I think it is
time and until both have learned a few things they ought to know before
they get married. She is a vain, selfish, pretty piece of spoiledness,
and I don't believe she knows what real loving means. She is the sort
that wants what it hasn't got, and all the more if she thinks anybody
else is apt to get it. If she had any sense she would get a beau _pro
tem_. That is the best thing on earth to bring a man back to the
straight and narrow, and Whythe is the kind of man who needs to be
brought every now and then.

I gave her that for nothing one morning--I mean the suggestion in
general, though of course not personal--and she looked at me as if
trying to understand. And then something came in her face that must
have been an idea in her brain (her brain is slow), for, two days
afterward, she said she was going away. A week later she went to see a
rich aunt on her father's side who has a summer home somewhere and
corrals young men and compels them to come to it, Miss Bettie Simcoe
says. When she was gone a great weight seemed lifted off everybody,
and even the servants breathed better. As for Miss Susanna, she was
that lightened and relieved, though naturally not saying so, that she
looked ten years younger, and I know now it is true that some people in
a house are like fruit-cake on a weak stomach. They make life hard. I
didn't say my prayers that night. I just sang the Doxology three times
as loud as I could and jumped into bed. Praise is prayer.

CHAPTER VI

I have been here four weeks to-day. If there are any people in or
around Twickenham Town that I do not know, it is because they are not
knowable. I love people, and, being naturally sociable and not very
particul