There are some things not required of human nature to stand.  Elizabeth Hamilton Carter is one of them.  I was glad to give her back her beau.  I felt truly Virginian in doing it, for Virginians always say, when giving you something, that they don’t want it; I certainly didn’t want Whythe.  I wouldn’t have known what to do with him after the summer was over, and I was conscious of great relief in getting him off my hands without further loss or trouble.  I couldn’t tell Elizabeth this, of course, though there were times when it took a good deal of something I did not know I had to keep from doing so.  Also, it took more strength to keep several other things to myself than I knew I possessed.  It took praying and the end of the sheet to do it, but I did it, and I’m getting encouraged about K. C.

What encourages me is this:  Two nights after the picnic Elizabeth came to my room and asked if she might have a little talk with me, as she felt she ought to.  I told her she could, and she sat down and began.  Miss Susanna was back in her own quarters, the people from Florida having gone, and I had just finished saying my prayers and was ready to hop into bed when Elizabeth knocked at my door.  I knew what was coming from the look on her face and her manner of walking, and the way she held her head.

If ever I write that book I am always thinking about I am going to put Elizabeth in it as well as Miss Araminta Armstrong, and if I could get some men to match them I would have some corking characters to begin with.  But no kind of pen-and-ink picture of Elizabeth would do her justice.  Her sweetness of speech when she is particularly nasty is beyond the power of human portrayal.  I got in bed quick when she said she wanted to talk, because I was afraid I might have to hit something, and the pillow was the only thing I could manage without sound.  I put it where I could give it a dig when politeness required control, and told her to go ahead.

In her last sleep Elizabeth will pose.  She took her seat near the window where the moonlight could shine on her (she looked very pretty in her pink-silk kimono, a hand-over from her rich aunt, and shabby but becoming in color), and for a moment she didn’t say anything, just fooled with the pink ribbon on her hair.  And then she said she had a secret to tell me; said it so soft, with her head on the side, that I had to ask her to speak louder please, and I got nearer the edge of the bed.  Elbow on it and chin in the palm of one hand, I prayed hard to be polite in my own room, and reached out for an end of the sheet with the other.  Again I told her to go ahead.  After a minute she went.

“You and Whythe have been such friends that I think you should be the first to know that—­”

“Have you and Whythe made up?” I stuck my bare foot over the edge of the bed and wriggled it.  “If you have you had better be married quick and not take any more chances.  I’m awfully glad if things are settled.  Have you bounced the other fellow yet?”