Well, I was surprised, all right.  It was not and never had been mine.  Instead of my blue serge sailor suit and my robe de nuit and kimona etc., it contained a checked gentleman’s suit, a mussed shirt and a cap.  At first I was merely astonished.  Then a sense of loss overpowered me.  I suffered.  I was prostrated with grief.  Not that I cared a Rap for the clothes I’d lost, being most of them to small and patched here and there.  But I had lost the plot of my Play.  My Career was gone.

I was undone.

It may be asked what has this Recitle to do with the account of meeting a Celebrity.  I reply that it has a great deal to do with it.  A bare recitle of a meeting may be News, but it is not Art.

A theme consists of Introduction, Body and Conclusion.

This is still the Introduction.

When I was at last revived enough to think I knew what had happened.  The young man who took the Cinder out of my eye had come to sit beside me, which I consider was merely kindness on his part and nothing like Flirting, and he had brought his Suitcase over, and they had got mixed up.  But I knew the Familey would call it Flirting, and not listen to a word I said.

A madness siezed me.  Now that everything is over, I realize that it was madness.  But “there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc.”  It was to be.  It was Karma, or Kismet, or whatever the word is.  It was written in the Book of Fate that I was to go ahead, and wreck my life, and generaly ruin everything.

I locked the door behind Hannah, and stood with tradgic feet, “where the brook and river meet.”  What was I to do?  How hide this evadence of my (presumed) duplicaty?  I was inocent, but I looked gilty.  This, as everyone knows, is worse than gilt.

I unpacked the Suitcase as fast as I could, therfore, and being just about destracted, I bundled the things up and put them all together in the toy Closet, where all Sis’s dolls and mine are, mine being mostly pretty badly gone, as I was always hard on dolls.

How far removed were those Inocent Years when I played with dolls!

Well, I knew Hannah pretty well, and therfore was not surprised when, having hidden the trowsers under a doll buggy, I heard mother’s voice at the door.

“Let me in, Barbara,” she said.

I closed the closet door, and said:  “What is it, mother?”

“Let me in.”

So I let her in, and pretended I expected her to kiss me, which she had not yet, on account of the whooping cough.  But she seemed to have forgotten that.  Also the Kiss.

“Barbara,” she said, in the meanest voice, “how long have you been smoking?”

Now I must pause to explain this.  Had mother aproached me in a sweet and maternal manner, I would have been softened, and would have told the Whole Story.  But she did not.  She was, as you might say, steeming with Rage.  And seeing that I was misunderstood, I hardened.  I can be as hard as adamant when necessary.