g
to read my soul when we happen to meet at the foot of the hill and sit
on the worm fence for a while. I don't think he is trying to really
read my soul, for he isn't much on reading anything, but he certainly
can say beautiful things. They aren't so, but they sound well, and I
must admit I enjoy hearing them. They make me feel so grown-upy, and
then, too, it will be a great help when I begin my book to remember
what a man says on certain occasions and how he says it. They are
natural couriers, the men in this town are, but they don't always mean
to be taken in earnest, and Mr. James Burke came near getting in an
awful mess by paying a girl a lot of compliments he oughtn't to have
paid, he being a married man and she not knowing it. She was a very
serious person and believed all that was told her and came near
breaking her engagement with another man on account of the pretty
speeches Mr. Burke made to her. She was from Rhode Island and visiting
May Strudwick, who told her for mercy's sake not to pay any attention
to speeches of that sort and to hold on to the Rhode-Islander, for Mr.
Burke said the same fluff to all the girls who came to Twickenham, and
as long as it was just eyebrows and things of that kind no harm was
done. But she couldn't understand and went home sooner than she
expected. I understand. It's lots of fun--the different ways of
saying the same thing--and all enlightenment is advantageous.

A few nights ago Whythe got fearfully sentimental and said all sorts of
thrilly, foolish nonsense, and the way he said it certainly added to
its enjoyment. He's a corking courter, and if he could teach the way
he does it he would have crowded classes all right. We were at Bessie
Debree's party, and just before supper we went out on the side porch,
which has bushels of roses on it and no lights, and sat down on a
rustic bench in the corner where we could hear the music and see the
moon and not be seen, and the minute we sat I knew what was coming.

Whythe put his elbow on the back of the seat and, chin in the palm of
his hand, looked at me as if we were on a desert island and there was
no one else in all the world but me, and he would ask for no one else
if I alone was there; and then with his other hand he tried to take out
of my fingers a rose he had just pulled and given me. I remembered in
time that Jess had told me to keep my hands to myself if anybody seemed
interested in them, so I put the rose on