I had had a grand time being in love.  Every day there was some new evidence of how nice a beau is, and though the other boys didn’t let Whythe have it all his own way, as they called it, and we had a jolly time together and I danced and rode and picnicked and pleasured with all of them, still, it was understood that Whythe was my steady and they gave him right much chance.  It had been loads of fun having a steady, and I knew now how excited Mazie, one of our maids at home, must have felt the day she became engaged to hers, who was the milkman.  But I had somehow thought that nobody but girls of Mazie’s sort had steadies, and I had wished I could be a maid for a few weeks just to find out how it would feel to possess some one and be possessed by him.  I guess it amounts to about the same thing, though, love does, no matter in what way it comes to one or by what name we call it, if it is the genuine thing.  I have certainly never felt about Whythe in the way Mazie must have felt about her milkman, judging by her face, but I had been enjoying myself and I didn’t intend to stop with too much suddenness.  Mr. Willie had warned me and I would remember, but it is against the law to condemn a man unheard.  The Bible says so.  I would go slowly for once in my life and give Whythe a chance to conduct his own defense.  It wouldn’t be necessary to mention that a case was being tried or that I would be both judge and jury.  There are times in life when it is well to keep some things to oneself.

CHAPTER XV

Yesterday it poured in torrents all day.  None of us could get out of the house, so while Miss Araminta darned my stockings, which hadn’t been touched since I came to Twickenham Town, I read aloud to the whole bunch in the library and we had a very nice time.  Miss Araminta has tried to teach me to darn since I have been here, but she has not succeeded in doing it!  I will never be a darner.  I have asked Mother not to get me all-over silk stockings, as the Lisle-thread feet last much longer, but she doesn’t seem to remember, and one of my charities is giving my nice stockings away when they can no longer be worn with self-respect.  Clarissa, Mother’s maid, is supposed to keep them in order, but she doesn’t do it, and she has headaches so often I don’t like to say anything to her, with the result that Mother thinks I wear out an awful lot, and yet I know she wouldn’t want me to wear stockings with holes in them.  I found out early in life that it is foolish to try to do things you are not by nature fitted to do, and I am not fitted by nature to sit still for hours and fill up a little hole in a stocking to save a few cents or a dollar or so.  I don’t do it.  I would rather save in some other way.