me Billy behind me while the little
Fur Coat stood off and bawled for help and said afterward he didn't
know how to swim. Having on heavy clothes, I went down quick and was
hard to get up, and I would be an angel this minute if Billy hadn't
been there. But Billy is always there, which is what makes this summer
so queer. He isn't here.

On account of servants and things his mother didn't want to open their
country place this year, and my mother didn't want to open hers, so two
houses are closed. That means a scatteration for both families and is
why I am here and Billy in Europe; and if he is having as good a time
as I am he isn't grunting at the change. He didn't want to go to
Europe. His father made him. His mother and two sisters needed a man
along and, as Mr. Sloane couldn't go, Billy had to, and he was a great
big silent growl when he went off. I wasn't. I wanted to come to
Twickenham Town. We had passed through it once on our way to Florida
and I have been crazy to come back ever since, and when I found Mother
was going with Florine and Jessica to a splashy place I didn't want to
go to I begged her to let me come here and board with Miss Susanna
Mason and--glory be--she let me do it!

She is a sort of relation, Miss Susanna is, a farback one, but nothing
is too far back to claim here, and everybody who is anybody is kin to
one another, or kin to some one else's kin, which makes for
sociableness, and I am having a perfectly grand time. In all the world
there isn't another place like the one I am in this summer, and I am
getting so familiar with a new kind of natural history that maybe some
day I will be an authority on it. Ancestry is the chief asset of
Twickenham Town, and though you speak with the tongues of men and of
angels and have not ancestors it profiteth you nothing. That is, among
the natives. Being an outsider, I have decided not to have ancestors,
and I am going to see if the people won't take me in for myself. I
have always believed a nice person was nice if there weren't any family
shrubs and things, and a nasty one was nasty no matter how many coats
of arms there were or how heirloomy their houses, so I have asked Miss
Susanna please to excuse me if I don't call her cousin (we are seventh
removed, I think she said), and also, unless she has to, I hope she
won't tell any one my real name is Katherine Bird, but let everybody
call me Kitty Canary, as everybody does at home. I think she t