then so I could
go in and tell Julia to bring out the tea and cakes. When I came from
the kitchen I stepped into my room and took out one of Alfred's letters
from the desk drawer and opened it at random, and put my finger down on
a line with my eyes shut. This was what it was--

"--and all these years I have walked the world, blindfolded to its
loveliness with the blackness that came to me when I found that you--"

I didn't read any more, but pushed it back in a hurry and went back to
the company comforted in a way, but feeling a little more in sympathy
with Mrs. Johnson than I had before Aunt Bettie and her guest from
London had interrupted our algebraic demonstration on the man subject.
You can't always be sure of the right answer to X in any proposition of
life; that is, a woman can't!

And, furthermore, I didn't like that next hour much, just as a sample of
life, for instance. Aunt Bettie had got her joining-together humour well
started, and there, before my face, she made a present of every nice man
in Hillsboro to that lovely, distinguished, strange girl who could have
slipped through a bucket hoop if she had tried hard. I had to sit there,
listen to the presentations, watch her drink two delicious cups of tea
full of sugar and cream, and consume without fear three of Jane's puffy
cakes, while I crumbled mine in secret and set half the cup of tea out
of sight behind a fern pot.

It was bad enough to hear Aunt Bettie just offer her Tom, who, if he is
her own son, is my favourite cousin, but I believe the worst minute I
almost ever faced was when she began on the judge, for I could see from
Aunt Adeline's shoulder beyond Miss Clinton how she was enjoying that,
and she added another distinguished ancestor to his pedigree every time
Aunt Bettie paused for breath. I couldn't say a word about the fish and
Aunt Adeline wouldn't! I almost loved Mrs. Johnson when she bit off a
thread viciously and said, "Humph," as she rose to start the tea-party
home.

* * * * *

That night I did so many exercises that at last I sank exhausted in a
chair in front of my mirror and put my head down on my arms and cried
the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and
ugly and dowdy and--widowed. It couldn't have been jealousy, for I just
love that girl. I want most awfully to hug her very slimness, and it
was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in
Hillsboro