There’s nothing sentimental or sympathetic about Miss Bettie.  Neither is there anything in the earth below or the heavens above that she has not an opinion of her own about, but the one concerning which she has the most decided opinions is Man.  She doesn’t mince matters when she gets on him.  Also, she is an authority on God.  She can tell you exactly why He does things, and she quotes Him as if He were her most confidential friend, and the only thing which stumps her is why He made such a mess of what is considered His most important work.  Mention a male person’s name and up go her eyebrows and down come the corners of her lips and on the side goes her head, and nothing need be said for her opinion to be understood.  She is positively triumphant over Whythe.  She goes around with a “Didn’t-I-tell-you-so?” expression oozing out of every feature of her face, and I think she tells Elizabeth she is fortunate to have discovered his fickleness so soon.

If Elizabeth thinks she is fortunate she has a queer way of showing it.  She must cry a good deal at night, judging by her eyes in the morning, but the thing that’s most the matter with her is madness.  She can’t take it in that Whythe is showing no signs of anxiousness to make up.  She imagined, I suppose, when they had their fuss that it wouldn’t last very long and that he would give in to whatever she wanted, and now that he isn’t giving in she is so freezingly furious with me she barely speaks to me.  She seems to think it is my fault and that my coming just when I did is the cause of the whole trouble.  Though she never says anything directly to me, she makes remarks in my presence about the way men flirt in Twickenham Town and how dangerous it is, especially for young girls who have never had any experience in things of that sort and are deceived by it; and as she talks I just rock and rock if in a chair, and swing and swing if in a hammock, until she has said a good many nasty things, and then I get up and go up-stairs and bring down a box of candy Whythe has sent me and offer it to her with my most Christian forgiveness and most understanding smile, and, strange to say, she never takes a piece!

I don’t mind her remarks.  They’re natural, and if she wasn’t such a horrid little teapot I’d do anything I could to straighten out things; but until she behaves herself I won’t.  I am having a very interesting time being in love, and why should I stop just because a man she broke with isn’t grieving, but is keeping himself in practice saying to me what he used to say to her?  I am not going to stop until I think it is time and until both have learned a few things they ought to know before they get married.  She is a vain, selfish, pretty piece of spoiledness, and I don’t believe she knows what real loving means.  She is the sort that wants what it hasn’t got, and all the more if she thinks anybody else is apt to get it.  If she had any sense she would get a beau pro tem.  That is the best thing on earth to bring a man back to the straight and narrow, and Whythe is the kind of man who needs to be brought every now and then.