charged entirely too little for her work, and it was poor religion to go to church on Sunday and sing praises to God and underpay a poor little dressmaker.  They said they supposed it was, but I don’t think they thought it very reverential in me to speak of God in connection with a dress-maker and what she got for sewing.  I gave each one a list of their expenditures, with the cost of everything on it, and each had a little left over after getting their slippers and some sachet powder and a bottle of violet-water apiece, and, after all, that brother of Miss Araminta’s got a little of the sapphire money.  But it wasn’t much.  I saw to that.  It’s been awfully exciting in Twickenham lately.

The event of the year is the MacLean party and the best of everything is saved for it, and in itself it makes every tongue in town talk until you wonder why tongues are the only things that never tire, and then, lo and behold! two days before it came off back comes Elizabeth Hamilton Carter, bringing her beau behind her, and off start the same tongues on a new lap and no breath taken in between.

I wish Billy could see it, the thing Elizabeth brought back!  He wears men’s clothes (very good ones) and he is twenty-seven years old, and has large hands and feet and ears and a feeble mustache, but as a man he isn’t much.  He looks like a hatter and is seemingly dumb, and he blinks his eyes so continually that no one can tell their color.  Also he bites his finger-nails.  I advised Elizabeth to get a beau pro tem., but I didn’t mean anything like that.  If she wants jealousy to bring Whythe back to her she should keep something on hand to be jealous of.  Elizabeth has an iron will and a copper determination, but about as much judgment as a horse-fly.

Miss Bettie Simcoe’s eyebrows haven’t come down good since the night the engagees arrived.  She has an explanation for the situation, as she calls it, there never yet being a situation she couldn’t explain, and she says the engagement is a piece of management on the part of Elizabeth’s aunt on her father’s side, the aunt she has been visiting.  This aunt is society crazy, and, knowing you can’t keep step in society without money, she arranged the whole thing.  Anyhow, Elizabeth has a gorgeous ring and a magnificent pin, and of course she ought to be happy if diamonds and things mean happiness, but she isn’t happy, and for the first time since I met her I can’t make her out.  Before I know it I am going to feel sorry for her, and then good-by to in-loveness for me!  I have very little sense at times, and no hold-outness at all when certain things come to pass.

Elizabeth still loves Whythe.  Engaged or not to some one else, she still cares only for him.  I don’t want him.  I wonder how it might be managed—­getting them to take in how silly they have been.  I believe I’ll try and see if something can’t be done.  Watchful waiting may be all right in some cases, but I never cared for waiting.  Milton says all things come to him who hustles while he waits.  You get a move on, Kitty Canary, and see what you can do!