things I shouldn’t, and Miss Araminta simpers so when any one mentions Mr. Sparks’s name (he’s the new widower minister of the Presbyterian church, with no chance of escape), and Elizabeth Hamilton Carter makes me ashamed of my sex, and I feel like I have swallowed concentrated extract of Human Peculiarities, I remember that not one of them has a father of any sort, much less my sort, or a precious mother and two dandy sisters and a good many nice relations and some bully friends—­when I remember all that, remember how many I have to love me, I spit out the peculiarities and try not to mind them, try to see how funny they are.  But sometimes the taste sticks right long.  I don’t suppose I spit right.  What I can’t understand is that if people want to be loved—­and everybody does—­why in the name of goodness don’t they do a little loving on their own account?  You needn’t expect to get what you don’t give.  I’m glad I was born with a taste for liking, though I don’t like every one, by a jugful.  When I come across a righteous hypocrite I get out of the way, if it isn’t convenient to make the hypocrite get out of mine.  There are some people I could never congeal with and I am never even going to try.

CHAPTER XIX

I wonder what made me waste time thinking about Miss Bettie Simcoe and human peculiarities when I started to say something about sitting under the trees with Whythe at the MacLean party, but, born a rambler, I will ramble unto death, and there’s no use wasting time lamenting natural deficiencies.  Whythe, of course, couldn’t very conveniently make personal remarks, as people were passing pretty close, though he did say I looked like a dream, which I did not, being too brown for a dream; but I did look real nice.  I fished out one of the party dresses Mother made Clarissa put in my trunk, which I haven’t worn since I have been here, and I suppose it suited my brownness, as it was creamy and stuck out in the silly way skirts stick now, and it was new-fashioned enough to make everybody look at it and nudge a little.  Whythe thought it was lovely, and told me so sixteen times, which was tiresome, and then I saw he was watching Elizabeth, who was on the porch with her new beau and did not know really whether my dress was blue or pink.  The only thing he was thinking of was that not far from him was a superseder in possession of something which was once his.  Whythe doesn’t like to be superseded in anything affecting his personal estimate of himself.

The Lord certainly let loose a lot of contradictions when he started the human race.  When I saw the way Whythe was watching Elizabeth, and remembered how she had looked at him when he passed her a few minutes before, I knew two specimens of a common variety were before me, and I made up a parable as I watched them watch each other.  The two specimens had been in love and been engaged.  They had a fuss.