“I am so hurt that I wouldn’t tell anybody about it but you, dear, but last night as he walked home with me, after we had been dancing down at Sue’s to the new phonograph, he—­he put his arm almost around me and I think—­I think he was going to kiss me if I hadn’t prevented him—­that is, he did kiss my hair—­I think.”  Edith is the pale-nun type, and I wish she could have seen how lovely she was with the blush that even the failure of Tolly to kiss her brought up under her deep-blue eyes.  Edith didn’t get any farther north to school than Louisville, and her maiden aunt, Miss Editha Shelby Morris Carruthers, brought her up perfectly beautifully.  I didn’t know how to comfort her because I had been two years at the Manor on the Hudson and then a year in Europe, and, though nobody ever has directly kissed me, a girl’s hand and hair don’t seem to count out in the world.

To take Edith’s mind off Tolly’s perfidy I told her about the play, and she was as impressed as anybody could wish her to be, and promised to stand by me and make people understand why I couldn’t dance and picnic like other people because of this great work I had to do for a dear friend.  I told her not to tell anybody but Sue, and she went home completely comforted by her friendly interest in Peter and me.  In fact, she really adored the idea of helping me help Peter, and seemed to forget her anger at Tolly with a beautiful spirit.

About that time Eph solemnly called me in to lunch.  Eph is a nice, jolly old negro until he gets a white linen jacket and apron on, and then he turns into a black mummy.  I think it is because I used to want to talk to him at the table when I still sat in a high chair.  I don’t believe he has any confidence in my discretion even now, and that is why he seats me with such a grand and forbidding display of ceremony.

“Betty dear,” said mother, after Eph had served her chicken soup and passed her the beaten biscuits, “I found an old note-book of my mother’s that has all the wonderful things she did to the negroes and other live stock on her farm out in Harpeth Valley.  You know she ran the whole thousand acres herself after father’s death in her twenty-seventh year, and she was a wonderful woman, though she did have three girls and only one son.  There is a section of her notes devoted to cows and their diseases, and Sam might be interested to hear how she managed them so that even then her cows sold for enormous sums.  Suppose you look over it and tell him about it.”

“Oh, I will.  Thank you, mother!” I answered, as I took three little brown biscuits, to Eph’s affectionate delight, and also as a shock to his proprieties.