nt and
had a good time doing it, though we had to dry our feet with my
petticoat. But from the way his face went he must have made it
convenient to walk in that direction and must have seen us, or he
wouldn't have known anything about our going, as we were careful to
look around before we took off our shoes and stockings. I can't endure
him, but he is nearly sixty and I am only sixteen, and I shouldn't have
spoken as I did; and possibly because I was so happy over Father's
coming I told him last night that if I had said anything I shouldn't I
hoped he would forget it and I, too, would forget what had been said.
And that, of course, I knew gentlemen in Twickenham Town never did
anything gentlemen shouldn't, and that my quickness of speech was
always getting ahead of me; and he looked so relieved that I am
perfectly certain he followed us. But, anyhow, he was very pleasant
last night and told a scream of a story about poor little Miss Lily Lou
Eppes when she thought she had a beau. She had almost landed him when
he got away. He's never been heard from since.

CHAPTER VIII

It's over--Father's visit is. He has been gone a week, and it will be
a whole month before he can come again. He has to divide up between
Mother and the girls and me, and he can only get away once in two
weeks, because his partner is ill and business has something the matter
with it and has to be watched, which is why he could stay only four
days in Twickenham Town. I don't see why fathers have to work so hard,
and why wives and daughters must have so many unnecessary things, and
such big houses and so many new clothes and automobiles and parties and
pleasures, which aren't real fun after you have them. But most women
seem to want them, and keep on scrambling for what other people
scramble for, and only a few have sense enough to see how foolish it
all is and stop. Maybe they are wound up so tight they can't stop. I
don't know. I only know I do not want to live the life a lot of women
I know live, and I am not going to do it.

I wish Father could see it the way I do--about working so hard, I
mean--and I think he might, for he says I am a chip off the block and
he is the block, and in almost everything we feel alike; but there's
Mother and the girls, who care for things I don't care for, and of
course they must have them. He gives them everything they want, but he
looked so awfully tired the day he came I could think of nothing else