I don’t know what’s the matter with Billy.  I haven’t had a letter from him for a week, or a single card.  He must be crazy.  I’ve been so busy I have not written for ten days, and if I don’t get a letter soon he won’t get one from me for another ten.  He can’t expect me to do what he doesn’t do, and besides, a man doesn’t want what he gets too easy, even letters.  I don’t suppose he could be sick.  If he was—­ I am not going to let myself think sickness or automobile accidents or sliding off mountain peaks (they are in Switzerland now and Billy would get to the top of anything he started for or die trying).  And though I say to myself forty times a day he is all right, I wake up at night and wonder if anything could be the matter.  I am wondering all the time.

Maybe that is why I was a little nicer to Whythe at the party than I need to have been, because I wanted to forget something it was not well to remember if I was out to enjoy myself.  After I had danced with half a dozen boys and spoken to everybody on the place, we went out on the lawn, Whythe and I, and sat on a rustic seat under a great maple-tree to cool off and rest awhile; and though everybody could see us and several couples were under several other trees (a number of cases being on hand and apt to culminate in August), Miss Bettie Simcoe had remarks to make, of course.  She made them the next day at breakfast.

I wish I could buy a beau for Miss Bettie and make a present of him to her, but, being a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I couldn’t very well do it.  I never yet have seen a man I would be that hard on.  But it would be the only way she could be made to see some things, and maybe it might make her feel young again.  Jess says there’s nothing so kittenish as a spinster who’s caught an unexpected beau.  He is the most rejuvenating thing on earth to a woman who wants one.  All don’t want them.  There are a great many more sensible women in this world than people realize, but in certain small places matrimony is still the chief pursuit in which women can engage without being thought unwomanly.  Miss Bettie doesn’t pursue, and men are good dodgers in this part of the world, but if one of them would say a few things to her of the sort that Whythe knows how to say so well, her sniffing and snorting and seeing might grow less.

I don’t like her, but I feel sorry for her, for nobody really loves her, and it must be awful to have nobody to love you best of all on earth.  I couldn’t live if nobody loved me.  I could not.  I might live without food and live without drink, and do without clothes and do without air—­the right kinds of those things, I mean—­but I couldn’t and I wouldn’t live without loving.  As long as I am on this little planet I expect to love a lot of people and I hope they will love me in return.  When Miss Bettie makes me so mad I have to go out of the room to keep from saying