le grey silk to-day, and it looks so nice. You must tell Miss
Willy that it has been very much admired. Mrs. Payson asked me if it was
made in Dinwiddie, and, you know, she gets all of her clothes from New
York. That must have been why I thought her over-dressed when I first
saw her. By the way, I've almost changed my mind about her since I wrote
you what I thought of her. I believe now that the whole trouble with her
is simply that she isn't a Southern lady. She means well, I am sure, but
she isn't what I should call exactly refined. There's something "horsey"
about her--I can't think of any other way to express it--something that
reminds me just a little bit of Abby--and, you remember, we always said
Abby got that from being educated in the North. Tell dearest Susan I
really think it is fortunate that she did not go to one of their
colleges. Mrs. Payson is a college woman and it seems to me that she is
always trying to appear as clever as a man. She talks in a way sometimes
that sounds as if she believed in woman's rights and all that sort of
thing. I told Oliver about it, and he laughed and said that men hated
talk like that. He says all a man admires in a woman is her power of
loving, and that when she begins to ape a man she loses her charm for
him. I can't understand why Mr. Payson married his wife. He said such
nice things to me the other day about my being so domestic and such a
home lover, that I really felt sorry for him. When I told him that I
was so fond of staying indoors that I would never cross my threshold if
Oliver didn't make me, he laughed and said that he wished I'd convert
his wife to my way of thinking. Yet he seems to have the greatest
admiration for her, and, do you know, I believe he even admires that red
feather, though he doesn't approve of it. He never turns his eyes away
from her when they are together, which isn't very much, as she goes
about just as she pleases without him. Can you understand how a person
can both admire and disapprove of a thing? Oliver says he knows how it
is, but I must say that I don't. I hope and pray that our marriage will
always be different from theirs. Oliver and I are never apart for a
single minute except when he is at work in the office. He hasn't written
a line since we came here, but he is going to begin as soon as we get
settled, and then he says that I may sit in the room and sew if I want
to. I can't believe that people really love each other unless they want