Except for Billy, who is a boy and does not count, I am the youngest
person in our family; and when I tell you that there are eleven of
us--well, you can dimly imagine the kind of a time I have. Two or three
days ago I heard Grandma Evarts say something to the minister about “the
down-trodden and oppressed of foreign lands,” and after he had gone I
asked her what they were. For a wonder, she told me; usually when Billy
and I ask questions you would think the whole family had been struck
dumb. But this time she answered and I remember every word--for if ever
anything sounded like a description of Billy and me it was what Grandma
Evarts said that day. I told her so, too; but, of course, she only
looked at me over her spectacles and didn't understand what I meant.
Nobody ever does except Billy and Aunt Elizabeth, and they're not much
comfort. Billy is always so busy getting into trouble and having me get
him out of it, and feeling sorry for himself, that he hasn't time to
sympathize with me. Besides, as I've said before, he's only a boy, and
you know what boys are and how they lack the delicate feelings girls
have, and how their minds never work when you want them to. As for Aunt
Elizabeth, she is lovely sometimes, and the way she remembers things
that happened when she was young is simply wonderful. She knows how
girls feel, too, and how they suffer when they are like Dr. Denbigh says
I am--very nervous and sensitive and high-strung. But she admitted to
me to-day that she had never before really made up her mind whether I am
the “sweet, unsophisticated child” she calls me, or what Tom Price says
I am, The Eastridge Animated and Undaunted Daily Bugle and Clarion Call.
He calls me that because I know so much about what is going on; and he
says if Mr. Temple could get me on his paper as a regular contributor
there wouldn't be a domestic hearth-stone left in Eastridge. He says the
things I drop will break every last one of them, anyhow, beginning with
the one at home. That's the way he talks, and though I don't always know
exactly what he means I can tell by his expression that it is not very
complimentary.
Aunt Elizabeth is different from the others, and she and I have
inspiring conversations sometimes--serious ones, you know, about life
and responsibility and careers; and then, at other times, just when
I'm revealing my young heart to her the way girls do in books, she gets
absent-minded or laughs at me, or stares and says, “You extraordinary
infant,” and changes the subject. At first it used to hurt me
dreadfully, but now I'm beginning to think she does it when she can't
answer my questions. I've asked her lots and lots of things that have
made her sit up and gasp, I can tell you, and I have more all ready as
soon as I get the chance.
There is another thing I will mention while I think of it. Grandma
Evarts is always talking about “rules of life,” but the only rule of
life I'm perfectly sure I have is to always mention things when I think
of them. Even that doesn't please the family, though, because sometimes
I mention things they thought I didn't know, and then they are annoyed
and cross instead of learning a lesson by it and realizing how silly it
is to try to keep secrets from me. If they'd TELL me, and put me on
my honor, I could keep their old secrets as well as anybody. I've kept
Billy's for years and years. But when they all stop talking the minute
I come into a room, and when mamma and Peggy go around with red eyes and
won't say why, you'd better believe I don't like it. It fills me with
the “intelligent discontent” Tom is always talking about. Then I don't
rest until I know what there is to know, and usually when I get through
I know more than anybody else does, because I've got all the different
sides--Maria's and Tom's and Lorraine's and Charles Edward's and mamma's
and papa's and grandma's and Peggy's and Aunt Elizabeth's. It isn't that
they intend to tell me things, either; they all try not to. Every one of
them keeps her own secrets beautifully, but she drops things about the
others. Then all I have to do is to put them together like a patch-work
quilt.
You needn't think it's easy, though, for the very minute I get near any
of the family they waste most of the time we're together by trying to
improve me. You see, they are all so dreadfully old that they have had
time to find out their faults and youthful errors, and every single one
of them thinks she sees ALL her faults in me, and that she must help
me to conquer them ere it is too late. Aunt Elizabeth says they mean it
kindly, and perhaps they do. But if you have ever had ten men and women
trying to improve you, you will know what my life is. Tom Price, who
married my sister Maria, told Dr. Denbigh once that “every time a
Talbert is unoccupied he or she puts Alice or Billy, or both, on the
family moulding-board and kneads awhile.” I heard him say it and it's
true. All _I_ can say is that if they keep on kneading and moulding me
much longer there won't be anything left but a kind of a pulpy mass. I
can see what they have done to Billy already; he's getting pulpier every
day, and I don't believe his brain would ever work if I didn't keep
stirring it up.
However, the thing I want to say while I think of it is this. It is a
question, and I will ask it here because there is no use of asking it at
home: Why is it that grown-up men and women never have anything really
interesting to say to a girl fifteen years old? Then, if you can answer
that, I wish you would answer another: Why don't they ever listen or
understand what a girl means when she talks to them? Billy and I have
one rule now when we want to say something serious. We get right in
front of them and fix them with a glittering eye, the way the Ancient
Mariner did, you know, and speak as slowly as we can, in little bits
of words, to show them it's very important. Then, sometimes, they pay
attention and answer us, but usually they act as if we were babies
gurgling in cunning little cribs. And the rude way they interrupt us
often and go on talking about their own affairs--well, I will not say
more, for dear mamma has taught me not to criticise my elders, and I
never do. But I watch them pretty closely, just the same, and when I see
them doing something that is not right my brain works so hard it keeps
me awake nights. If it's anything very dreadful, like Peggy's going and
getting engaged, I point out the error, the way they're always pointing
errors out to me. Of course it doesn't do any good, but that isn't my
fault. It's because they haven't got what my teacher calls “receptive
minds.”
I'm telling you all this before I tell you what has happened, so you
will be sorry for Billy and me. If you are sorry already, as well indeed
you may be, you will be a great deal more sorry before I get through.
For if ever any two persons were “downtrodden and oppressed” and
“struggling in darkness” and “feeling the chill waters of affliction,”
it's Billy and me to-night--all because we tried to help Peggy and
Lorraine and Aunt Elizabeth after they had got everything mixed up! I
told them I was just trying to help, and Tom Price said right off that
there was only one thing for Billy and me to do in future whenever the
“philanthropic spirit began to stir” in us, and that was to get on board
the suburban trolley-car and go as far away from home as our nickels
would take us, and not hurry back. So you see he is not a bit grateful
for the interesting things I told Maria.
I will now tell what happened. It began the day Billy heard the station
agent at Whitman read Aunt Elizabeth's telegram to Harry Goward. The
telegram had a lot of silly letters and words in it, so Billy didn't
know what it meant, and, of course, he didn't care. The careless child
would have forgotten all about it if I hadn't happened to meet him
at Lorraine's after he got back from Whitman. He is always going to
Lorraine's for some of Sallie's cookies--she makes perfectly delicious
ones, round and fat and crumbly, with currants on the top. Billy had
taken so many that his pockets bulged out on the sides, and his mouth
was so full he only nodded when he saw me. So, of course, I stopped to
tell him how vulgar that was, and piggish, and to see if he had left any
for me, and he was so anxious to divert my mind that as soon as he could
speak he began to talk about seeing Aunt Elizabeth over in Whitman. That
interested me, so I got the whole thing out of him, and the very minute
he had finished telling it I made him go straight and tell Peggy. I told
him to do it delicately, and not yell it out. I thought it would cheer
and comfort Peggy to know that some one was doing something, instead
of standing around and looking solemn, but, alas! it did not, and Billy
told me with his own lips that it was simply awful to see Peggy's face.
Even he noticed it, so it must have been pretty bad. He said her eyes
got so big it made him think of the times she used to imitate the wolf
in Red Riding-Hood and scare us 'most to death when we were young.
When Billy told me that, I saw that perhaps we shouldn't have told
Peggy, so the next day I went over to Lorraine's again to ask her what
she thought about it. I stopped at noon on my way home from school, and
I didn't ring the bell, because I never do. I walked right in as usual,
falling over the books and teacups and magazines on the floor, and I
found Lorraine sitting at the tea-table with her head down among the
little cakes and bits of toast left over from the afternoon before. She
didn't look up, so I knew she hadn't heard me, and I saw her shoulders
shake, and then I knew that she was crying. I had never seen Lorraine
cry before, and I felt dreadfully, but I didn't know just what to do or
what to say, and while I stood staring at her I noticed that there was
a photograph on the table with a lot of faded flowers. The face of the
photograph was up and I saw that it was a picture of Mr. Wilde--the
one that usually stands on the mantel-piece. Lorraine is always talking
about him, and she has told me ever and ever so much about how nice
and kind he was to her when she was studying art in New York. But, of
course, I didn't know she cared enough for him to cry over his picture,
and it gave me the queerest feelings to see her do it--kind of wabbly
ones in my legs, and strange, sinking ones in my stomach. You see, I had
just finished reading Lady Hermione's Terrible Secret. A girl at school
lent it to me. So when I saw Lorraine crying over a photograph and faded
flowers I knew it must mean that she had learned to love Mr. Wilde with
a love that was her doom, or would be if she didn't hurry and get over
it. Finally I crept out of the house without saying a word to her or
letting her know I was there, and I leaned on the gate to think it over
and try to imagine what a girl in a book would do. In Lady Hermione her
sister discovered the truth and tried to save the rash woman from the
sad consequences of her love, so I knew that was what I must do, but I
didn't know how to begin. While I was standing there with my brain going
round like one of Billy's paper pinwheels some one stopped in front
of me and said, “Hello, Alice,” in a sick kind of a way, like a boy
beginning to recite a piece at school. I looked up. It was Harry Goward!
You'd better believe I was surprised, for, of course, when he went away
nobody expected he would come back so soon; and after all the fuss and
the red eyes and the mystery _I_ hoped he wouldn't come back at all. But
here he was in three days, so I said, very coldly, “How do you do, Mr.
Goward,” and bowed in a distant way; and he took his hat off quickly and
held it in his hand, and I waited for him to say something else. All
he did for a minute was to look over my head. Then he said, in the same
queer voice: “Is Mrs. Peter in? I wanted to have a little talk with
her,” and he put his hand on the gate to open it. I suppose it was
dreadfully rude, but I stayed just where I was and said, very slowly,
in icy tones, that he must kindly excuse my sister-in-law, as I was sure
she wouldn't be able to receive him. Of course I knew she wouldn't want
him or any one else to come in and see her cry, and besides I never
liked Harry Goward and I never expect to. He looked very much surprised
at first, and then his face got as red as a baby's does when there's a
pin in it somewhere, and he asked if she was ill. I said, “No, she is
not ill,” and then I sighed and looked off down the street as if I would
I were alone. He began to speak very quickly, but stopped and bit his
lip. Then he turned away and hesitated, and finally he came back and
took a thick letter from his pocket and held it out to me. He was
smiling now, and for a minute he really looked nice and sweet and
friendly.
“Say, Alice,” he said, in the most coaxing way, “don't YOU get down on
me, too. Do me a good turn--that's a dear. Take this letter home and
deliver it. Will you? And say I'm at the hotel waiting for an answer.”
Now, you can see yourself that this was thrilling. The whole family
was watching every mail for a letter from Harry Goward and here he was
offering me one! I didn't show how excited I was; I just took the letter
and turned it over so I couldn't see the address and slipped it into my
pocket, and said, coldly, that I would deliver it with pleasure. Harry
Goward was looking quite cheerful again, but he said, in a worried tone,
that he hoped I wouldn't forget, because it was very, very important.
Then I dismissed him with a haughty bow, the way they do on the stage,
and this time he put his hat on and really went.
Of course after that I wanted to go straight home with the letter, but
I knew it wouldn't do to leave Lorraine bearing her terrible burden
without some one to comfort her. While I was trying to decide what to
do I saw Billy a block away with Sidney Tracy, and I whistled to him
to come, and beckoned with both hands at the same time to show it was
important. I had a beautiful idea. In that very instant I “planned my
course of action,” as they say in books. I made up my mind that I would
send the letter home by Billy, and that would give me time to run over
to Maria's and get something to eat and ask Maria to go and comfort
Lorraine. Maria and Lorraine don't like each other very much, but I knew
trouble might bring them closer, for Grandma Evarts says it always does.
Besides, Maria is dreadfully old and knows everything and is the one the
family always sends for when things happen. If they don't send she comes
anyhow and tells everybody what to do. So I pinned the letter in Billy's
pocket, so he couldn't lose it, and I ordered him to go straight home
with it. He said he would. He looked queer and I thought I saw him drop
something near a fence before he came to me, but I was so excited I
didn't pay close attention. As soon as Billy started off I went to
Maria's.
She was all alone, for Tom was lunching with some one at the hotel. When
we were at the table I told her about Lorraine, and if ever any one was
excited and really listened this time it was sister Maria. She pushed
back her chair, and spoke right out before she thought, I guess.
“Charles Edward's wife crying over another man's picture!” she said.
“Well, I like that! But I'm not surprised. I always said no good would
come of THAT match!”
Then she stopped and made herself quiet down, but I could see how hard
it was, and she added: “So THAT was the matter with Charles Edward when
I met him this morning rushing along the street like a cyclone.”
I got dreadfully worried then and begged her to go to Lorraine at once,
for I saw things were even more terrible than I had thought. But Maria
said: “Certainly not! I must consult with father and mother first. This
is something that affects us all. After I have seen them I will go to
Lorraine's.” Then she told me not to worry about it, and not to speak
of it to any one else. I didn't, either, except to Billy and Aunt
Elizabeth; and when I told Aunt Elizabeth the man's name I thought she
would go up into the air like one of Billy's skyrockets. But that part
does not belong here, and I'm afraid if I stop to talk about it I'll
forget about Billy and the letter.
After luncheon Maria put her hat on and went straight to our house to
see mother, and I went back to school. When I got home I asked, the
first thing, if Billy had delivered the letter from Harry Goward, and
for the next fifteen minutes you would have thought every one in our
house had gone crazy. That wretched boy had not delivered it at all!
They had not even seen him, and they didn't know anything about the
letter. After they had let me get enough breath to tell just how I had
met Harry and exactly what he had said and done, mother rushed off to
telephone to father, and Aunt Elizabeth came down-stairs with a wild,
eager face, and Grandma Evarts actually shook me when she found I didn't
even know whom the letter was for. I hadn't looked, because I had been
so excited. Finally, after everybody had talked at once for a while.
Grandma Evans told me mamma had said Billy could go fishing that
afternoon, because the weather was so hot and she thought he looked pale
and overworked. The idea of Billy Talbert being overworked! I could have
told mamma something about THAT.
Well, I saw through the whole thing then. Billy hadn't told me, for fear
I would want to go along; so he had sneaked off with Sidney Tracy, and
if he hadn't forgotten all about the letter he had made up his mind it
would do as well to deliver it when he came home. That's the way Billy's
mind works--like Tom Price's stop-watch. It goes up to a certain instant
and then it stops short. You'd better believe I was angry. And it didn't
make it any easier for me to remember that while I was having this
dreadful time at home, and being reproached by everybody. Billy and
Sidney Tracy were sitting comfortably under the willows on the edge of
the river pulling little minnows out of the water. I knew exactly where
they would be--I'd been there with Billy often enough. Just as I thought
of that I looked at poor Peggy, sitting in her wrapper in papa's big
easy-chair, leaning against a pillow Grandma Evarts had put behind her
back, and trying to be calm. She looked so pale and worn and worried and
sick that I made up my mind I'd follow those boys to the river and get
that letter and bring it home to Peggy--for, of course, I was sure it
was for her. I wish you could have seen her face when I said I'd do it,
and the way she jumped up from the chair and then blushed and sank back
and tried to look as if it didn't matter--with her eyes shining all the
time with excitement and hope.
I got on my bicycle and rode off, and I made good time until I crossed
the bridge. Then I had to walk along the river, pushing the bicycle, and
I came to those two boys so quietly that they never saw me until I
was right behind them. They were fishing still, but they had both been
swimming--I could tell that by their wet hair and by the damp, mussy
look of their clothes. When Billy saw me he turned red and began to make
a great fuss over his line. He didn't say a word; he never does when
he's surprised or ashamed, so he doesn't speak very often, anyhow; but I
broke the painful silence by saying a few words myself. I told Billy how
dreadful he had made everybody feel and how they were all blaming
me, and I said I'd thank him for that letter to take home to his poor
suffering sister. Billy put down his rod, and all the time I talked he
was going through his pockets one after the other and getting redder
and redder. I was so busy talking that I didn't understand at first just
what this meant, but when I stopped and held out my hand and looked at
him hard I saw in his guilty face the terrible, terrible fear that he
had lost that letter; and I was so frightened that my legs gave way
under me, and I sat down on the grass in my fresh blue linen dress, just
where they had dripped and made it wet.
All this time Sidney Tracy was going through HIS pockets, too, and just
as I was getting up again in a hurry he took off his cap and emptied
his pockets into it. I wish you could have seen what that cap held
then--worms, and sticky chewing-gum, and tops, and strings, and hooks,
and marbles, and two pieces of molasses candy all soft and messy, and
a little bit of a turtle, and a green toad, and a slice of
bread-and-butter, and a dirty, soaking, handkerchief that he and Billy
had used for a towel. There was something else there, too--a dark, wet,
pulpy, soggy-looking thing with pieces of gum and molasses candy and
other things sticking to it. Sidney took it out and held it toward me in
a proud, light-hearted way:
“There's your letter, all right,” he said, and Billy gave a whoop of joy
and called out, “Good-bye, Alice,” as a hint for me to hurry home. I
was so anxious to get the letter that I almost took it, but I stopped in
time. I hadn't any gloves on, and it was just too dreadful. If you could
have seen it you would never have touched it in the world. I got near
enough to look at it, though, and then I saw that the address was so
dirty and so covered with gum and bait and candy that all I could read
was a capital “M” and a small “s” at the beginning and an “ert” at the
end; the name between was hidden. I covered my eyes with my hand and
gasped out to the boys that I wanted the things taken off it that didn't
belong there, and when I looked again Sidney had scraped off the worst
of it and was scrubbing the envelope with his wet handkerchief to make
it look cleaner. After that you couldn't tell what ANY letter was, so I
just groaned and snatched it from his hands and left those two boys in
their disgusting dirt and degradation and went home.
When I got back mamma and Grandma Evarts and Tom Price and Peggy and
Aunt Elizabeth were in the parlor, looking more excited than ever,
because Maria had been there telling the family about Lorraine. Then she
had gone on to Lorraine's and Tom had dropped in to call for her and was
waiting to hear about the letter. They were all watching the door when
I came in, and Peggy and Aunt Elizabeth started to get up, but sat down
again. I stood there hesitating because, of course, I didn't know who to
give it to, and Grandma Evarts shot out, “Well, Alice! Well, Well!”
as if she was blowing the words at me from a little peashooter. Then I
began to explain about the address, but before I could say more than two
or three words mamma motioned to me and I gave the letter to her.
You could have heard an autumn leaf fall in that room. Mamma put on her
glasses and puzzled over the smear on the envelope, and Peggy drew a
long breath and jumped up and walked over to mamma and held out her
hand. Mamma didn't hesitate a minute. “Certainly it must be for you, my
dear,” she said, and then she added, in a very cold, positive way, “For
whom else could it possibly be intended?” No one spoke; but just as
Peggy had put her finger under the flap to tear it open, Aunt Elizabeth
got up and crossed the room to where mamma and Peggy stood. She spoke
very softly and quietly, but she looked queer and excited.
“Wait one moment, my dear,” she said to Peggy. “Very probably the letter
IS for you, but it is just possible that it may be for some one else.
Wouldn't it be safer--wiser--for ME to open it?”
Then Peggy cried out, “Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, how dreadful! How can you
say such a thing!” Mother had hesitated an instant when Aunt Elizabeth
spoke, but now she drew Peggy's head down to her dear, comfy shoulder,
and Peggy stayed right there and cried as hard as she could--with little
gasps and moans as if she felt dreadfully nervous. Then, for once in
my life, I saw my mother angry. She looked over Peggy's head at Aunt
Elizabeth, and her face was so dreadful it made me shiver.
“Elizabeth,” she said, and she brought her teeth right down hard on the
word, “this is the climax of your idiocy. Have you the audacity to claim
here, before me, that this letter from my child's affianced husband is
addressed to you?”
Aunt Elizabeth looked very pale now, but when she answered she spoke as
quietly as before.
“If it is, Ada,” she said, “it is against my wish and my command.
But--it may be.” Then her voice changed as if she were really begging
for something.
“Let me open it,” she said. “If it is for Peggy I can tell by the first
line or two, even if he does not use the name. Surely it will do no harm
if I glance at it.”
Mother looked even angrier than before.
“Well,” she said, “it could do no harm, you think, if you read a letter
intended for Peggy, but you don't dare to risk letting Peggy read a
letter addressed by Harry Goward to you. This is intolerable,
Elizabeth Talbert. You have passed the limit of my endurance--and of my
husband's.”
She brought out the last words very slowly, looking Aunt Elizabeth
straight in the eyes, and Aunt Elizabeth looked back with her head very
high. She has a lovely way of using such expressions as “For the rest”
and “As to that,” and she did it now.
“As to that,” she said, “my brother must speak for himself. No one
regrets more bitterly than I do this whole most unpleasant affair. I can
only say that with all my heart I am trying to straighten it out.”
Grandma Evarts sniffed just then so loudly that we all looked at her,
and then, of course, mamma suddenly remembered that I was still there,
regarding the scene with wide, intelligent young eyes, and she nodded
toward the door, meaning for me to go out. My, but I hated to! I picked
up grandma's ball of wool and drew the footstool close to her feet, and
looked around to see if I couldn't show her some other delicate girlish
attention such as old ladies love, but there wasn't anything, especially
as grandma kept motioning for me to leave. So I walked toward the door
very slowly, and before I got there I heard Tom Price say:
“Oh, come now; we're making a lot of fuss about nothing. There's a very
simple way out of all this. Alice says Goward's still at the hotel.
I'll just run down there and explain, and ask him to whom that letter
belongs.”
Then I was at the door, and I HAD to open it and go out. The voices went
on inside for a few minutes, but soon I saw Tom come out and I went to
him and slipped my arm inside of his and walked with him across the lawn
and out to the sidewalk. I don't very often like the things Tom says,
but I thought it was clever of him to think of going to ask Harry Goward
about the letter, and I told him so to encourage him. He thanked me very
politely, and then he stopped and braced his back against the lamp-post
on the corner and “fixed me with a stern gaze,” as writers say.
“Look here, Clarry,” he said (“Clarry” is short, he says, for Daily
Bugle and Clarion Call, which is “too lengthy for frequent use”),
“you're doing a lot of mischief to-day with your rural delivery
system for Goward and your news extras about Lorraine. What's this
cock-and-bull story you've got up about her, anyway?”
I told him just what I had seen. When I got through he said there was
“nothing in it.”
“That bit about her head being among the toast and cake,” he went on,
“would be convincing circumstantial evidence of a tragedy if it had been
any other woman's head, but it doesn't count with Lorraine--I mean
it doesn't represent the complete abandonment to grief which would be
implied if it happened in the case of any one else. You must remember
that when Lorraine wants to have a comfortable cry she's got to choose
between putting her head in the jam on the sofa, or among the wet paint
and brushes in the easy-chair, or among the crumbs on the tea-table.
As for that photograph, it probably fell off the mantel-piece to the
tea-table, instead of falling, as usual, into the coal-hod. To sum up,
my dear Clarry, if you had remembered the extreme emotionalism of
your sister Lorraine's temperament and the--er--eccentricity of her
housekeeping, you would not have permitted yourself to be so sadly
misled. Not remembering it, you've done a lot of mischief. All these
things being so, no one will believe them. And to-night, when you are
safely tucked into your little bed, if you hear the tramping of many
feet on the asphalt walks you may know what it will mean. It will mean
that your mother and father, and Elizabeth, and Grandma Evarts and
Maria and Peggy will be dropping in on Lorraine, each alone and quite
casually, of course, to find out what there really is in this terrible
rumor. And some of them will believe to their dying day that there was
something in it.”
Well, that made me feel very unhappy. For I could see that under Tom's
gay exterior and funny way of saying things he really meant every
word. Of course I told him that I had wanted to help Lorraine and Peggy
because they were so wretched, and he made me promise on the spot that
if ever I wanted to help him I'd tell him about it first. Then he went
off to the hotel looking more cheerful, and I was left alone with my sad
thoughts.
When I got into the house the first thing I saw was Billy sneaking out
of the back door. I had meant to have a long and earnest talk with Billy
the minute he got home, and point out some of his serious faults, but
when I looked at him I saw that mamma or grandma had just done it. He
looked red eyed and miserable, and the minute he saw me he began
to whistle. Billy never whistles except just before or just after
a whipping, so my heart sank, and I was dreadfully sorry for him. I
started after him to tell him so, but he made a face at me and ran; and
just then Aunt Elizabeth came along the hall and dragged me up to her
room and began to ask me all over again about Mr. Goward and all that
he said--whether I was perfectly SURE he didn't mention any name. She
looked worried and unhappy. Then she asked about Lorraine, but in an
indifferent voice, as if she was really thinking about something else.
I told her all I knew, but she didn't say a word or pay much attention
until I mentioned that the man in the photograph was Mr. Lyman Wilde.
Then--well, I wish you had seen Aunt Elizabeth! She made me promise
afterwards that I'd never tell a single soul what happened, and I won't.
But I do wish sometimes that Billy and I lived on a desert island, where
there wasn't anybody else. I just can't bear being home when everybody
is so unhappy, and when not a single thing I do helps the least little
bit!