Kitty Canary | Page 8

judging by her eyes in the morning,
but the thing that's most the matter with her is madness. She can't take
it in that Whythe is showing no signs of anxiousness to make up. She
imagined, I suppose, when they had their fuss that it wouldn't last very
long and that he would give in to whatever she wanted, and now that he
isn't giving in she is so freezingly furious with me she barely speaks to
me. She seems to think it is my fault and that my coming just when I
did is the cause of the whole trouble. Though she never says anything

directly to me, she makes remarks in my presence about the way men
flirt in Twickenham Town and how dangerous it is, especially for
young girls who have never had any experience in things of that sort
and are deceived by it; and as she talks I just rock and rock if in a chair,
and swing and swing if in a hammock, until she has said a good many
nasty things, and then I get up and go up-stairs and bring down a box of
candy Whythe has sent me and offer it to her with my most Christian
forgiveness and most understanding smile, and, strange to say, she
never takes a piece!
I don't mind her remarks. They're natural, and if she wasn't such a
horrid little teapot I'd do anything I could to straighten out things; but
until she behaves herself I won't. I am having a very interesting time
being in love, and why should I stop just because a man she broke with
isn't grieving, but is keeping himself in practice saying to me what he
used to say to her? I am not going to stop until I think it is time and
until both have learned a few things they ought to know before they get
married. She is a vain, selfish, pretty piece of spoiledness, and I don't
believe she knows what real loving means. She is the sort that wants
what it hasn't got, and all the more if she thinks anybody else is apt to
get it. If she had any sense she would get a beau pro tem. That is the
best thing on earth to bring a man back to the straight and narrow, and
Whythe is the kind of man who needs to be brought every now and
then.
I gave her that for nothing one morning--I mean the suggestion in
general, though of course not personal--and she looked at me as if
trying to understand. And then something came in her face that must
have been an idea in her brain (her brain is slow), for, two days
afterward, she said she was going away. A week later she went to see a
rich aunt on her father's side who has a summer home somewhere and
corrals young men and compels them to come to it, Miss Bettie Simcoe
says. When she was gone a great weight seemed lifted off everybody,
and even the servants breathed better. As for Miss Susanna, she was
that lightened and relieved, though naturally not saying so, that she
looked ten years younger, and I know now it is true that some people in
a house are like fruit-cake on a weak stomach. They make life hard. I

didn't say my prayers that night. I just sang the Doxology three times as
loud as I could and jumped into bed. Praise is prayer.
CHAPTER VI
I have been here four weeks to-day. If there are any people in or around
Twickenham Town that I do not know, it is because they are not
knowable. I love people, and, being naturally sociable and not very
particular, I have had a perfectly grand time making acquaintances with
the high and the low and, the in-betweeners; and the sick and well, and
the dear and the queer, and the ancestrals and up-comers, and the rich
and the poor, and every other variety that grows; and now I am as
familiar with most of the family histories as the oldest inhabitant. That's
the nice part of living in a small place. Something depends on you and
you depend on all the rest of the town, but at home you're lost in
numbers and only a few know you're living. Here everybody knows,
also they know some things that perhaps had better be unknown. As for
talk, they are the best talkers on earth, and there's no subject under the
sun they won't talk about. It's an inheritance, Father says, and has been
handed down from ages past, and, though they don't read very much,
they can do more with a little knowledge than most learned people with
their information, and they