Thrush Hill, Oct. 5, 18--.
It is all settled at last, and in another week I shall have left
Thrush Hill. I am a little bit sorry and a great bit glad. I am going
to Montreal to spend the winter with Alicia.
Alicia--it used to be plain Alice when she lived at Thrush Hill and
made her own dresses and trimmed her own hats--is my half-sister. She
is eight years older than I am. We are both orphans, and Aunt
Elizabeth brought us up here at Thrush Hill, the most delightful old
country place in the world, half smothered in big willows and poplars,
every one of which I have climbed in the early tomboy days of gingham
pinafores and sun-bonnets.
When Alicia was eighteen she married Roger Gresham, a man of forty.
The world said that she married him for his money. I dare say she did.
Alicia was tired of poverty.
I don't blame her. Very likely I shall do the same thing one of these
days, if I get the chance--for I too am tired of poverty.
When Alicia went to Montreal she wanted to take me with her, but I
wanted to be outdoors, romping in the hay or running wild in the woods
with Jack.
Jack Willoughby--Dr. John H. Willoughby, it reads on his office
door--was the son of our nearest neighbour. We were chums always, and
when he went away to college I was heartbroken.
The vacations were the only joy of my life then.
I don't know just when I began to notice a change in Jack, but when he
came home two years ago, a full-fledged M.D.--a great, tall,
broad-shouldered fellow, with the sweetest moustache, and lovely thick
black hair, just made for poking one's fingers through--I realized it
to the full. Jack was grown up. The dear old days of bird-nesting and
nutting and coasting and fishing and general delightful goings-on were
over forever.
I was sorry at first. I wanted "Jack." "Dr. Willoughby" seemed too
distinguished and far away.
I suppose he found a change in me, too. I had put on long skirts and
wore my hair up. I had also found out that I had a complexion, and
that sunburn was not becoming. I honestly thought I looked pretty, but
Jack surveyed me with decided disapprobation.
"What have you done to yourself? You don't look like the same girl.
I'd never know you in that rig-out, with all those flippery-trippery
curls all over your head. Why don't you comb your hair straight back,
and let it hang in a braided tail, like you used to?"
This didn't suit me at all. When I expect a compliment and get
something quite different I always get snippy. So I said, with what I
intended to be crushing dignity, "that I supposed I wasn't the same
girl; I had grown up, and if he didn't like my curls he needn't look
at them. For my part, I thought them infinitely preferable to that
horrid, conceited-looking moustache he had grown."
"I'll shave it off if it doesn't suit you," said Jack amiably.
Jack is always so provokingly good-humoured. When you've taken pains
and put yourself out--even to the extent of fibbing about a
moustache--to exasperate a person, there is nothing more annoying than
to have him keep perfectly angelic.
But after a while Jack and I adjusted ourselves to the change in each
other and became very good friends again. It was quite a different
friendship from the old, but it was very pleasant. Yes, it was; I
_will_ admit that much.
I was provoked at Jack's determination to settle down for life in
Valleyfield, a horrible, humdrum, little country village.
"You'll never make your fortune there, Jack," I said spitefully.
"You'll just be a poor, struggling country doctor all your life, and
you'll be grey at forty."
"I don't expect to make a fortune, Kitty," said Jack quietly. "Do you
think that is the one desirable thing? I shall never be a rich man.
But riches are not the only thing that makes life pleasant."
"Well, I think they have a good deal to do with it, anyhow," I
retorted. "It's all very well to pretend to despise wealth, but it's
generally a case of sour grapes. _I_ will own up honestly that I'd
_love_ to be rich."
It always seems to make Jack blue and grumpy when I talk like that. I
suppose that is one reason why he never asked me to settle down in
life as a country doctor's wife. Another was, no doubt, that I always
nipped his sentimental sproutings religiously in the bud.
Three weeks ago Alicia wrote to me, asking me to spend the winter with
her. Her letters always make me just gasp with longing for the life
they describe.
Jack's face, when I told him about it, was so woebegone that I felt a
stab of remorse, even in the heyday of my delight.
"Do you really mean it, Kitty? Are you going away to leave me?"
"You won't miss me much," I said flippantly--I had a creepy, crawly
presentiment that a scene of some kind was threatening--"and I'm
awfully tired of Thrush Hill and country life, Jack. I suppose it is
horribly ungrateful of me to say so, but it is the truth."
"I shall miss you," he said soberly.
Somehow he had my hands in his. _How_ did he ever get them? I was sure
I had them safely tucked out of harm's way behind me. "You know,
Kitty, that I love you. I am a poor man--perhaps I may never be
anything else--and this may seem to you very presumptuous. But I
cannot let you go like this. Will you be my wife, dear?"
Wasn't it horribly straightforward and direct? So like Jack! I tried
to pull my hands away, but he held them fast. There was nothing to do
but answer him. That "no" I had determined to say must be said, but,
oh! how woefully it did stick in my throat!
And I honestly believe that by the time I got it out it would have
been transformed into a "yes," in spite of me, had it not been for a
certain paragraph in Alicia's letter which came providentially to my
mind:
Not to flatter you, Katherine, you are a beauty, my dear--if
your photo is to be trusted. If you have not discovered that
fact before--how should you, indeed, in a place like Thrush
Hill?--you soon will in Montreal. With your face and figure
you will make a sensation.
There is to be a nephew of the Sinclairs here this winter. He
is an American, immensely wealthy, and will be the catch of
the season. A word to the wise, etc. Don't get into any
foolish entanglement down there. I have heard some gossip of
you and our old playfellow, Jack Willoughby. I hope it is
nothing but gossip. You can do better than that, Katherine.
That settled Jack's fate, if there ever had been any doubt.
"Don't talk like that, Jack," I said hurriedly. "It is all nonsense. I
think a great deal of you as a friend and--and--all that, you know.
But I can never marry you."
"Are you sure, Kitty?" said Jack earnestly. "Don't you care for me at
all?"
It was horrid of Jack to ask that question!
"No," I said miserably, "not--not in that way, Jack. Oh, don't ever
say anything like this to me again."
He let go of my hands then, white to the lips.
"Oh, don't look like that, Jack," I entreated.
"I can't help it," he said in a low voice. "But I won't bother you
again, dear. It was foolish of me to expect--to hope for anything of
the sort. You are a thousand times too good for me, I know."
"Oh, indeed I'm not, Jack," I protested. "If you knew how horrid I am,
really, you'd be glad and thankful for your escape. Oh, Jack, I wish
people never grew up."
Jack smiled sadly.
"Don't feel badly over this, Kitty. It isn't your fault. Good night,
dear."
He turned my face up and kissed me squarely on the mouth. He had never
kissed me since the summer before he went away to college. Somehow it
didn't seem a bit the same as it used to; it was--nicer now.
After he went away I came upstairs and had a good, comfortable howl.
Then I buried the whole affair decently. I am not going to think of it
any more.
I shall always have the highest esteem for Jack, and I hope he will
soon find some nice girl who will make him happy. Mary Carter would
jump at him, I know. To be sure, she is as homely as she can be and
live. But, then, Jack is always telling me how little he cares for
beauty, so I have no doubt she will suit him admirably.
As for myself--well, I am ambitious. I don't suppose my ambition is a
very lofty one, but such as it is I mean to hunt it down. Come. Let me
put it down in black and white, once for all, and see how it looks: