After I had refused Jim twice he met Bella at a camp in the Adirondacks

and when he came back he came at once to see me. He seemed to think I

would be sorry to lose him, and he blundered over the telling for twenty

minutes. Of course, no woman likes to lose a lover, no matter what she

may say about it, but Jim had been getting on my nerves for some time,

and I was much calmer than he expected me to be.

"If you mean," I said finally in desperation, "that you and Bella

are--are in love, why don't you say so, Jim? I think you will find that

I stand it wonderfully."

He brightened perceptibly.

"I didn't know how you would take it, Kit," he said, "and I hope we will

always be bully friends. You are absolutely sure you don't care a whoop

for me?"

"Absolutely," I replied, and we shook hands on it. Then he began about

Bella; it was very tiresome.

Bella is a nice girl, but I had roomed with her at school, and I was

under no illusions. When Jim raved about Bella and her banjo, and Bella

and her guitar, I had painful moments when I recalled Bella, learning

her two songs on each instrument, and the old English ballad she had

learned to play on the harp. When he said she was too good for him, I

never batted an eye. And I shook hands solemnly across the tea-table

again, and wished him happiness--which was sincere enough, but

hopeless--and said we had only been playing a game, but that it was time

to stop playing. Jim kissed my hand, and it was really very touching.

We had been the best of friends ever since. Two days before the wedding

he came around from his tailor's, and we burned all his letters to me.

He would read one and say: "Here's a crackerjack, Kit," and pass it

to me. And after I had read it we would lay it on the firelog, and Jim

would say, "I am not worthy of her, Kit. I wonder if I can make her

happy?" Or--"Did you know that the Duke of Belford proposed to her in

London last winter?"

Of course, one has to take the woman's word about a thing like that, but

the Duke of Belford had been mad about Maude Richard all that winter.

You can see that the burning of the letters, which was meant to be

reminiscently sentimental, a sort of how-silly-we-were-but-it-is

all-over-now occasion, became actually a two hours' eulogy of Bella. And

just when I was bored to death, the Mercer girls dropped in and heard

Jim begin to read one commencing "dearest Kit." And the next day after

the rehearsal dinner, they told Bella!




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