Dear Billy,—­I have been having such a perfectly grand time lately that it has been impossible to squeeze out a scrap in which to write you, and yet I have wanted to do so, for I am sure you will be glad to know how fearfully happy I am and what is causing the happiness.  I am in love.  It is the most wonderful thing I have ever been in, and thrillingly interesting.  I suppose you have been in it many times, but not my way, or you would have mentioned it, just as I am doing to you, as we are such old friends, and friends have the right to know of important happenings.  I hope you will like each other when you meet, for, though you are very unlike, you are both made of male material, and I have often noticed that men have many peculiarities in common.  One of them is out of sight out of love, and a great readiness to be admired and entertained.  He is a lawyer and couldn’t be better born, though he might be better educated; still, one mustn’t expect all things in one man, and his eyes are so wonderful, and he uses such poetic prose, that the lack of money and a few other lacks shouldn’t count.  He lives in a beautiful old house which has proud traditions and no bathrooms, and his family is one of the oldest and most disagreeable in America; still, we would not have to live with them if we were married.  Nothing on earth could make me sleep under the same roof with his sisters, who are so churchy that the minister himself is subject under them.  And neither would it be safe for me to be too closely associated with his mother.  However, things of that sort are in the distance, which may be far or may not, and I am not thinking of immediate marriage, but just how magnificent it is to have somebody in love with you who knows how to say so in the most delicious way, and with a voice that, when the moon is out, is truly heavenly.  I am telling you about it because I thought you might be interested and would like to know of my happiness; but, of course, I don’t want you to tell any one else, as it is still a secret and all so indefinite that it wouldn’t do to speak of it to any one but you.  I am scribbling this in the middle of the night, because I can’t sleep for thinking of some one, and because there is no time in the day in which to write.  I hope you are having a great time.  Give my love to the family and write me of your gladness at knowing of mine.

  As ever,
    Kitty.

Now what do you suppose made me write such slush as that?  And why is a female person born with such horridness in her that she can say things that are not so with a smile in public and cry her eyes out when alone?  That’s what I have been doing lately, though I can’t let tears have much time, for I am not by nature a crier, and they would disturb Miss Susanna at night.  In my secret heart I just wrote that letter to Billy because I was indignant with him for not writing to me for more than two weeks, and I didn’t intend to let him think I was sitting