were watching me, and knowing they felt they had a right to hear what was in the telegram without waiting for Mr. Pepper to tell them, I said an old friend of mine, who was anxious to know Twickenham Town, was coming to see it when he got back from Europe.  After which I gave Mr. Pepper a little wink which he understood, and I am sure no one was told the wording of the message I had received.  Mr. Pepper has a good deal of sense.

Happy?  I was the happiest girl in all the world that day.  I nearly sang my throat off when I got to my room, but I did not mention the telegram to anybody save Miss Susanna, and I didn’t go into details with her about it.  I just said a friend was coming to see me when he got back from Europe, and I said it in such a way she didn’t think I was interested very much.  She is so astonished by Elizabeth’s behavior, and so surprised at her marriage, which is to be in November, that I don’t think she paid any attention to what I said and got the impression it was a friend of Father’s who was coming to Twickenham Town.  I let her keep it.  I did not give it to her knowingly, but there was no need to take it away.

And last night, not being able to sleep, I knew I had not been in love with Whythe at all.  I don’t know a thing in the world about being in love.  I had tried to think I knew something, but I was mistaken.  I must say I enjoyed hearing Whythe’s crescendo, obligato, diminuendo way of making it, but I realize now I am not the sort of person to really fall in love with strange men.  Certainly I could never do it with a wabbly, changery, one-or-the-othery kind of man that Whythe is, and while it was pretty scrumptious thinking a twenty-five-year-older was in love with me, I soon found out it was a summer case and not at all serious.  And I am thankful I never thought I was enough in love to become engaged.  There might have been things to remember that one likes to forget when the real one comes along, and I have nothing of that sort to be sorry for.  I’m right particular at times.

If I am ever really and truly engaged I wonder if I will be as particular as a sixteen-year-old person, a girl person, ought to be?  I guess it will depend on whom I am engaged to, but, of course, not being in love, I couldn’t be engaged, and there is no use in thinking what I might do under circumstances that might warrant the doing of it, and when I see Billy I will just shake hands; that is—­

Every time I think of his coming I feel like opening my arms so wide I could take the whole world in, but I don’t open them.  I just go look at the calendar to see if another day hasn’t gone by yet.  When this morning I saw it was the 14th and realized there wasn’t but one more day to wait, I went to the window and did open my arms, and I sent a message into the air.  And then, because I felt so sorry for Miss Araminta Armstrong, who has nothing to wait for but older age, and for Miss Bettie Simcoe, who has long since stopped hoping, I went down-stairs and asked them if they wouldn’t like to motor to Glade Springs, and they said they would, and we went.  Also Mr. Willie Prince.  I didn’t want to ask him, but I couldn’t leave him out, and of course he wanted to go.  The going made the day pass a little quicker, but it has been a long day!  Awful long!