Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Kitty Canary.]
Kitty Canary
A NOVEL
BY
KATE LANGLEY BOSHER
AUTHOR OF
"MARY CARY" ETC.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
ESTABLISHED 1817
Copyright, 1913, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published February, 1918
KITTY CANARY
CHAPTER I
I am in love. It is the most scrumptious thing I have ever been in.
Perfectly magnificent! Every time I think of it I feel as if I were
going down an elevator forty floors and my heart flippity-flops so my
teeth mortify me. He used to be engaged to Elizabeth Hamilton Carter,
the niece of the lady at whose house I am boarding this summer, but he
did something he ought not to have done, or he didn't do something he
ought to have done, and they had a fuss. No one seems to know the
cause of it, but it was probably from her wanting him to be blind to
everything on earth but her, and a man isn't going to be blind when he
wants to see, and then she got _hurt_. I'd rather live in a house with
a cackling hen or a grunting pig than the sort of person who is always
getting hurt. But she's very pretty. Pink-and-white pretty, with
uplifting eyes and a little mouth that shuts itself when mad and says
nothing, and oozes more disagreeableness than if it talked. He still
thinks there isn't another girl in town who can touch her in looks. I
don't suppose a man ever gets over a real case of pink-and-white. It's
the kind that makes a tender memory if it isn't the best sort to live
with, and men like to have a memory to sigh over in secret. Her
rejected one may sigh in secret, but in public he does not seem to be
suffering. He isn't suffering. We like each other very much.
The reason I am glad I am in love is that I am sixteen and I was
getting afraid I wasn't ever going to fall in love. Three or four
times I have thought I was in it, but I wasn't, and I was beginning to
be sure I was the sort of person who doesn't fall. And, besides, it is
good for Billy, who, because he is twenty, thinks he is old enough to
have some things settled which there is no need to settle too soon.
Settled things are not exciting. I love excitement and not knowing
what a day may bring forth. Billy doesn't. He wants his ducks to be
always in a row.
Ever since he fished me out of the water-barrel sunk in Grandmother
Hatley's garden, when I was four and he eight, he has seemed to think I
belonged to him; and, though he doesn't imagine I know it and never
mentions it, he is always around when I am in danger or trouble, to get
me out. I suppose saving my life three or four times makes him feel I
can't take care of myself and therefore he must take care of me, but
that's a mistake. I have never had a horse to run away with me but
once. Billy did tell me not to ride her, and when she ran and would
have pitched me over her head and down a gully he caught her in the
nick of time and caught me, too, but that's the only time a thing of
that sort ever happened. He was real nice about it and never said
anything concerning having told me so and didn't make remarks of the
sort which other people rub in, but the next day the horse was sent
away. That's the thing which makes me fighting furious with Billy
sometimes. He doesn't say things. He does them. I wasn't afraid of
that horse and was going to keep on riding her, but the next day there
was no Lady-Bird to ride. The reason he sent her away was I wouldn't
promise not to ride her. Our summer homes are on adjoining places and
Horson, their stableman, a nice, drinky old person, lets me take out
anything I want, anything of Billy's, and, knowing he couldn't trust
Horson any more than me, he lent Lady-Bird to a man miles and miles
away and I never saw her again until she was a tame old thing I did not
want to ride. Billy behaves as if I were a child!
And then the very next winter I fell through the ice and he had to jump
in and get me out. He told me not to go to a certain part of the lake.
He had been all over it and tried it before I got my skates on, but I
forgot and went. A boy was with me, a skunky little rat, who, when he
saw the ice was cracking, tried to pull me back, and then he let go my
hand and flop I went in and flop came Billy behind me while the little
Fur Coat stood off and bawled for help and said afterward he didn't
know how to swim. Having on heavy clothes, I went down quick and was
hard to get up, and I would be an angel this minute if Billy hadn't
been there. But Billy is always there, which is what makes this summer
so queer. He isn't here.
On account of servants and things his mother didn't want to open their
country place this year, and my mother didn't want to open hers, so two
houses are closed. That means a scatteration for both families and is
why I am here and Billy in Europe; and if he is having as good a time
as I am he isn't grunting at the change. He didn't want to go to
Europe. His father made him. His mother and two sisters needed a man
along and, as Mr. Sloane couldn't go, Billy had to, and he was a great
big silent growl when he went off. I wasn't. I wanted to come to
Twickenham Town. We had passed through it once on our way to Florida
and I have been crazy to come back ever since, and when I found Mother
was going with Florine and Jessica to a splashy place I didn't want to
go to I begged her to let me come here and board with Miss Susanna
Mason and--glory be--she let me do it!
She is a sort of relation, Miss Susanna is, a farback one, but nothing
is too far back to claim here, and everybody who is anybody is kin to
one another, or kin to some one else's kin, which makes for
sociableness, and I am having a perfectly grand time. In all the world
there isn't another place like the one I am in this summer, and I am
getting so familiar with a new kind of natural history that maybe some
day I will be an authority on it. Ancestry is the chief asset of
Twickenham Town, and though you speak with the tongues of men and of
angels and have not ancestors it profiteth you nothing. That is, among
the natives. Being an outsider, I have decided not to have ancestors,
and I am going to see if the people won't take me in for myself. I
have always believed a nice person was nice if there weren't any family
shrubs and things, and a nasty one was nasty no matter how many coats
of arms there were or how heirloomy their houses, so I have asked Miss
Susanna please to excuse me if I don't call her cousin (we are seventh
removed, I think she said), and also, unless she has to, I hope she
won't tell any one my real name is Katherine Bird, but let everybody
call me Kitty Canary, as everybody does at home. I think she thought
it was very queer in me to say such things, but she smiled her
precious, patient little smile, and, though she didn't promise, she
evidently hasn't mentioned my sure-enough name, as no one here calls me
by any other than the one Billy gave me when I wasn't much bigger than
a baby. Just Kitty Canary will do for me.