Bab: A Sub-Deb | Page 6

in the neck?"
"Certainly not. A small v, perhaps."
"I've got a good neck." She rose impressively.
"You amaze and shock me, Barbara," she said coldly.
"I shouldn't have to wear tulle around my shoulders to hide the bones!" I retorted. "Sis is rather thin."
"You are a very sharp-tongued little girl," mother said, looking up at me. I am two inches taller than she is.
"Unless you learn to curb yourself, there will be no parties for you, and no party dresses."
This was the speach that broke the Camel's back. I could endure no more.
"I think," I said, "that I shall get married and end everything."
Need I explain that I had no serious intention of taking the fatal step? But it was not deliberate mendasity. It was Despair.
Mother actually went white. She cluched me by the arm and shook me.
"What are you saying?" she demanded.
"I think you heard me, mother" I said, very politely. I was however thinking hard.
"Marry whom? Barbara, answer me."
"I don't know. Anybody."
"She's trying to frighten you, mother" Sis said. "There isn't anybody. Don't let her fool you."
"Oh, isn't there?" I said in a dark and portentious manner.
Mother gave me a long look, and went out. I heard her go into father's dressing-room. But Sis sat on my bed and watched me.
"Who is it, Bab?" she asked. "The dancing teacher? Or your riding master? Or the school plumber?"
"Guess again."
"You're just enough of a little Simpleton to get tied up to some wreched creature and disgrace us all."
I wish to state here that until that moment I had no intention of going any further with the miserable business. I am naturaly truthful, and Deception is hateful to me. But when my sister uttered the above dispariging remark I saw that, to preserve my own dignaty, which I value above precious stones, I would be compelled to go on.
"I'm perfectly mad about him," I said. "And he's crazy about me."
"I'd like very much to know," Sis said, as she stood up and stared at me, "how much you are making up and how much is true."
None the less, I saw that she was terrafied. The family Kitten, to speak in allegory, had become a Lion and showed its clause.
When she had gone out I tried to think of some one to hang a love affair to. But there seemed to be nobody. They knew perfectly well that the dancing master had one eye and three children, and that the clergyman at school was elderly, with two wives. One dead.
I searched my Past, but it was blameless. It was empty and bare, and as I looked back and saw how little there had been in it but imbibing wisdom and playing basket-ball and tennis, and typhoid fever when I was fourteen and almost having to have my head shaved, a great wave of bitterness agatated me.
"Never again," I observed to myself with firmness. "Never again, If I have to invent a member of the Other Sex."
At that time, however, owing to the appearance of Hannah with a mending basket, I got no further than his name.
It was Harold. I decided to have him dark, with a very small black mustache, and Passionate eyes. I felt, too, that he would be jealous. The eyes would be of the smouldering type, showing the green-eyed monster beneath.
I was very much cheered up. At least they could not ignore me any more, and I felt that they would see the point. If I was old enough to have a lover--especialy a jealous one with the aformentioned eyes--I was old enough to have the necks of my frocks cut out.
While they were getting their wraps on in the lower hall, I counted my money. I had thirteen dollars. It was enough for a Plan I was beginning to have in mind.
"Go to bed early, Barbara," mother said when they were ready to go out.
"You don't mind if I write a letter, do you?"
"To whom?"
"Oh, just a letter," I said, and she stared at me coldly.
"I daresay you will write it, whether I consent or not. Leave it on the hall table, and it will go out with the morning mail."
"I may run out to the box with it."
"I forbid your doing anything of the sort."
"Oh, very well," I responded meekly.
"If there is such haste about it, give it to Hannah to mail."
"Very well," I said.
She made an excuse to see Hannah before she left, and I knew THAT I WAS BEING WATCHED. I was greatly excited, and happier than I had been for weeks. But when I had settled myself in the Library, with the paper in front of me, I could not think of anything to say in a letter. So I wrote a poem instead.
"To H---- "Dear love: you seem so far away, I would that you were