ndering about a good deal there. Maybe I was
love-sick--though I hope not, for my good name's sake. At least, it
was about this time father said that we were far too young for any
thought of marriage, but that Elsie could stay on in our house. Then
Elsie was not happy, and was all the time wanting to go back to Nance
Edgar's and her teaching at Mr. Mustard's--because my mother had got
accustomed to the Caw girls, Harriet and Constantia, by this time, and
could not bear the thought of parting with them. So Elsie, of course,
would not stay, and go she did, as you shall hear.

We could have had some pretty good times, she and I, but for this
worry. Father was about as fond of Elsie as I was (owing to the time
behind the Monks' Oven). But, of course, he would not go openly
against mother--that is, not in the house. It was not to be expected.
If it had been anything to do with the shop or business, he would
simply have told mother to mind her own affairs. And mother would have
done it, too. But with the house it was different.

Well, all this made me pretty melancholy--with no more stand-up in me
than a piece of chewed string. I read poetry, too, on the sly--such
rot, as I now see--never anything written plain out, but all the words
twisted, the grammar all tail foremost, and no sense at all mostly. I
don't wonder nowadays people only use it in church to sing--and even
then never think of bringing away their hymn books with them.

So what with the poetry, and the melancholy brought on by the thought
of Elsie going back to have that old bristly weasel-faced Mustard
breathe down her neck when she was doing sums, I brought myself to a
pretty low ebb. Elsie was sorry for me, I think, but said nothing.
She had aches of her own under the old blue serge blouse (left side
front) when Harriet Caw went past her on our stairs rustling in silk
underthings and an impudent little nose in the air as if she smelt a
drain.

At any rate I spent a good deal of time in the woods that summer.
Woods are most sympathetic places when you are young and just
desperately sad, but can't for the life of you tell why. Doctors, I
believe, know. But when mother asked old Doc McPhail, he only grinned
and said she had better "let the kail-pot simmer a while longer. The
broth would be none the worse!"

But my mother could make nothing out of that, nor I either for that
matter. Yet through the glass of the office door I actually saw the
d