I left just after supper. He did not see me when I went upstairs, but
he had missed me, for when Hannah and I came down, he was at the door,
waiting. Hannah was loaded down with silly favors, and lagged behind,
which gave him a chance to speak to me. I eyed him coldly and tried to
pass him, but I had no chance.
"I'll see you tomorrow, DEAREST," he whispered.
"Not if I can help it," I said, looking straight ahead. Hannah had
dropped a stocking--not her own. One of the Xmas favors--and was
fumbling about for it.
"You are tired and unerved to-night, Bab. When I have seen your father
tomorrow, and talked to him----"
"Don't you dare to see my father."
"----and when he has agreed to what I propose," he went on, without
paying any atention to what I had said, "you will be calmer. We can plan
things."
Hannah came puffing up then, and he helped us into the motor. He was
very careful to see that we were covered with the robes, and he tucked
Hannah's feet in. She was awfully flattered. Old Fool! And she babbled
about him until I wanted to slap her.
"He's a nice young man. Miss Bab," she said. "That is, if he's the One.
And he has nice manners. So considerate. Many a party I've taken your
sister to, and never before----"
"I wish you'd shut up, Hannah," I said. "He's a Pig, and I hate him."
She sulked after that, and helped me out of my things at home without a
word. When I was in bed, however, and she was hanging up my clothes, she
said: "I don't know what's got into you, Miss Barbara. You are that cross that
there's no living with you."
"Oh, go away," I said.
"And what's more," she added, "I don't know but what your mother ought
to know about these goingson. You're only a little girl, with all your
high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this Familey
if I can help it."
I put the bedclothes over my head, and she went out.
But of course I could not sleep. Sis was not home yet, or mother, and I
went into Sis's room and got a novel from her table. It was the story of
a woman who had married a man in a hurry, and without really loving him,
and when she had been married a year, and hated the very way her husband
drank his coffee and cut the ends off his cigars, she found some one she
really loved with her Whole Heart. And it was too late. But she wrote
him one Letter, the other man, you know, and it caused a lot of trouble.
So she said--I remember the very words-"Half the troubles in the world are caused by Letters. Emotions are
changable things"--this was after she had found that she really loved
her husband after all, but he had had to shoot himself before she found
it out, although not fataly--"but the written word does not change. It
remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life. No
woman should ever put her thoughts on paper."