Yes, I was glad to see him go home early before I got so light-headed with happiness as to squabble over pie with Pink and put a lightning-bug into Tony’s lemonade glass.  Father went with him, and how good it did seem to see them ride away together through the moonlight down Providence Road to Byrdsville, which lay in the dim distance with its lights making it my huge birthday cake, decorated with all the lilacs and roses and redbud abloom in the Harpeth Valley.  Some people are so accustomed to happiness that they don’t even notice it.  I’m glad I haven’t had that much.

One of the nice things about Miss Priscilla and the Colonel is that they go off and sit by themselves and entirely forget to ever say go home, until we have all had our fill of fun; then they begin to hurry at a terrible rate that gets up a pleasant excitement.  They seem to know just the minute when we might begin to get tired, and they never let it come.  Some people are geniuses about good times, and the Colonel and Miss Priscilla are two of that kind.

The ride home was almost the best of all.  The boys sang and gave Raccoon calls and practised different kinds of wood signals and ate the things we had saved from supper, with Mamie Sue to keep them company, also Lovelace Peyton, who slept part of the time with his head on Tony’s knees, but waked up if any stray refreshments threatened to get past him.  We all hushed at the edge of town, for the Colonel said it was after midnight, and he unpacked each one at his or her own front door so softly that not even a dog barked.  He put me out at the cottage because he didn’t want to stop the wagon in front of our house on account of disturbing Mother, and I went in to unfasten Roxanne’s dress and to get mine done likewise, then I could slip home through the garden, which is always so lovely with the moonlight making ghost flowers of Roxanne’s ancestral blossoms.

I wish I didn’t have to write you, leather Louise, what happened next, at the same time as the birthday, but I can’t sleep unless I do.  Would God be so cruel to me as to let me get just this one little taste of being happy and then take it away from me?  I won’t believe it!

This is what happened, set down in black and white, and I can draw no conclusions from it.  I refuse!  As Roxanne and I stood in the living hall, under the stern old Byrd grandmother, giggling and having a good, girl time like I have just been learning to do, suddenly the door opened and the Idol stood in the light we had lighted, with his face so pale I thought he was going to faint.

“Roxy,” he said, not seeming to notice me, “you haven’t been in my shed working with my bottles, have you?  Or could Lovey have got in?  I have the key and the window is barred, as I always keep it.”

“Oh, no, Douglass, I haven’t been near the shed this week.  My key is here on the hook in the left-hand bookcase,” and she reached behind her, took it, and showed it to him.  “I know Lovey hasn’t been there either, because we can trust him on honor.  Oh, what is the matter?” As Roxanne asked the question she was trembling all over, but not in the deadly cold way I was, I felt sure.  She couldn’t have stood it and lived.