ve told Ada, and here I am back in my room, laughing over the
result. I might as well have told the flour-barrel. Anything like Ada's
ease of character and inability to worry or even face a disturbing
situation I have never seen. I laugh, although her method of receiving
my tale was not, so to speak, flattering to me. Ada was in her loose
white kimono, and she was sitting at her shady window darning stockings
in very much the same way that a cow chews her cud; and when I told her,
under promise of the strictest secrecy, she just laughed that placid
little laugh of hers and said, taking another stitch, "Oh, well, boys
are always falling in love with older women." And when I asked if she
thought seriously that Peggy might not be running a risk, she said: "Oh
dear, no; Harry is devoted to the child. You can't be foolish enough.
Aunt Elizabeth, to think that he is in love with you NOW?"

I said, "Certainly not." It was only the principle involved; that the
young man must be very changeable, and that Peggy might run a risk in
the future if Harry were thrown in much with other women.

Ada only laughed again, and kept on with her darning, and said she
guessed there was no need to worry. Harry seemed to her very much like
Cyrus, and she was sure that Cyrus had never thought of another woman
besides herself (Ada).

I wonder if another woman would have said what I might have said,
especially after that imputation of the idiocy of my thinking that a
young man could possibly fancy ME. I said nothing, but I wondered what
Ada would say if she knew what I knew, if she would continue to chew her
cud, that Cyrus had been simply mad over another girl, and only married
her because he could not get the other one, and when the other died,
five years after he was married to Ada, he sent flowers, and I should
not to this day venture to speak that girl's name to the man. She was a
great beauty, and she had a wonderful witchery about her. I was only
a child, but I remember how she looked. Why, I fell in love with her
myself! Cyrus can never forget a woman like that for a cud-chewing
creature like Ada, even if she does keep his house in order and make a
good mother to his children. The other would not have kept the house
in order at all, but it would have been a shrine. Cyrus worshipped that
girl, and love may supplant love, but not worship. Ada does not know,
and she never will through me, but I declare I was almost wicked enough
to tell her