Bab: A Sub-Deb | Page 9

Carter insisted on pouring.
"I do so love to pour!" he said. "Really, after a long day's shopping, tea is the only thing that keeps me going until dinner. Cream or lemon, Leila dear?"
"Both," Sis said in an absent manner, with her eyes on me. "Barbara, come into the den a moment. I want to show you mother's Xmas gift."
She stocked in ahead of me, and lifted a book from the table. Under it was the photograph.
"You wretched child!" she said. "Where did you get that?"
"That's not your affair, is it?"
"I'm going to make it my affair. Did he give it to you?"
"Have you read what's written on it?"
"Where did you meet him?"
I hesitated because I am by nature truthfull. But at last I said:
"At school."
"Oh," she said slowly. "So you met him at school! What was he doing there? Teaching elocution?"
"Elocution!"
"This is Harold, is it?"
"Certainly." Well, he WAS Harold, if I chose to call him that, wasn't he? Sis gave a little sigh.
"You're quite hopeless, Bab. And, although I'm perfectly sure you want me to take the thing to mother, I'll do nothing of the sort."
SHE FLUNG IT INTO THE FIRE. I was raging. It had cost me a dollar. It was quite brown when I got it out, and a corner was burned off. But I got it.
"I'll thank you to burn your own things," I said with dignaty. And I went back to the drawing room.
The girls and Carter Brooks were talking in an undertone when I got there. I knew it was about me. And Jane came over to me and put her arm around me.
"You poor thing!" she said. "Just fight it out. We're all with you."
"I'm so helpless, Jane." I put all the despair I could into my voice. For after all, if they were going to talk about my private Affairs behind my back, I felt that they might as well have something to talk about. As Jane's second couzin once removed is in this school and as Jane will probably write her all about it, I hope this Theme is read aloud in class, so she will get it all straight. Jane is imaginative and may have a wrong idea of things.
"Don't give in. Let them bully you. They can't really do anything. And they're scared. Leila is positively sick."
"I've promised to write and break it off," I said in a tence tone.
"If he really loves you," said Jane, "the letter won't matter." There was a thrill in her voice. Had I not been uneasy at my deciet, I to would have thrilled.
Some fresh muffins came in just then and I was starveing. But I waved them away, and stood staring at the fire.
I am writing all of this as truthfully as I can. I am not defending myself. What I did I was driven to, as any one can see. It takes a real shock to make the average Familey wake up to the fact that the youngest daughter is not the Familey baby at seventeen. All I was doing was furnishing the shock. If things turned out badly, as they did, it was because I rather overdid the thing. That is all. My motives were perfectly ireproachible.
Well, they fell on the muffins like pigs, and I could hardly stand it. So I wandered into the den, and it occurred to me to write the letter then. I felt that they all expected me to do something anyhow.
If I had never written the wretched letter things would be better now. As I say, I overdid. But everything had gone so smoothly all day that I was decieved. But the real reason was a new set of furs. I had secured the dresses and the promise of the necklace on a Poem and a Photograph, and I thought that a good love letter might bring a muff. It all shows that it does not do to be grasping.
HAD I NOT WRITTEN THE LETTER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO TRADGEDY.
But I wrote it and if I do say it, it was a LETTER. I commenced it "Darling," and I said I was mad to see him, and that I would always love him. But I told him that the Familey objected to him, and that this was to end everything between us. They had started the phonograph in the library, and were playing "The Rosary." So I ended with a verse from that. It was really a most affecting letter. I almost wept over it myself, because, if there had been a Harold, it would have broken his Heart.
Of course I meant to give it to Hannah to mail, and she would give it to mother. Then, after the family had read it and it had got in its work, including the set of