“Father, what would you say if you knew some
one was decieving you?”
“Well,” he said, “I am an old Bird
and hard to decieve. A good many people think
they can do it, however, and now and then some one
gets away with it.”
I felt softened and repentent. Had he but patted
me once more, I would have told all. But he was
looking for a match for his cigar, and the opportunaty
passed.
“Well,” he said, “close up that
active brain of yours for the night, Bab, and here
are to `don’ts’ to sleep on. Don’t
break your neck in—in any way. You’re
a reckless young Lady. And don’t elope with
the first moony young idiot who wants to hold your
hand. There will quite likly be others.”
Others! How heartless! How cynical!
Were even those I love best to worldly to understand
a monogamous Nature?
When he had gone out, I rose to hide my Check Book
in the crown of an old hat, away from Hannah.
Then I went to the window and glansed out. There
was no moon, but the stars were there as usual, over
the roof of that emty domacile next door, whence all
life had fled to the neighborhood of the Country Club.
But a strange thing caught my eye and transfixed it.
There on the street, looking up at our house, now
in the first throes of sleep, was the Stranger I had
seen that afternoon when I had upset the milk wagon
against the Park fense.
I shall now remove the Familey to the country, which
is easier on paper than in the flesh, owing to having
to take china, silver, bedding and edables. Also
porch furnature and so on.
Sis acted very queer while we were preparing.
She sat in her room and knited, and was not at home
to Callers, although there were not many owing to
summer and every one away. When she would let
me in, which was not often, as she said I made her
head ache, I tried to turn her thoughts to marriage
or to nursing at the War, which was for her own good,
since she is of the kind who would never be happy leading
a simple life, but should be married.
But alas for all my hopes. She said, on the day
before we left, while packing her jewel box:
“You might just as well give up trying to get
rid of me, Barbara. Because I do not intend to
marry any one.”
“Very well, Leila,” I said, in a cold
tone. “Of course it matters not to me,
because I can be kept in school untill I am thirty,
and never come out or have a good time, and no one
will care. But when you are an old woman and
have not employed your natural function of having children
to suport you in Age, don’t say I did not warn
you.”
“Oh, you’ll come out all right,”
she said, in a brutal manner. “You’ll
come out like a sky rocket. You’d be as
impossable to supress as a boil.”
Carter Brooks came around that afternoon and we played
marbels in the drawing room with moth balls, as the
rug was up. It was while sitting on the floor
eating some candy he had brought that I told him that
there was no use hanging around, as Leila was not
going to marry. He took it bravely, and said
that he saw nothing to do but to wait for some of the
younger crowd to grow up, as the older ones had all
refused him.
