For the last week I have been going around to almost every house in town to say good-by.  I don’t know the exact day I will leave, as that will depend on when Mother says I must be home; but I didn’t want to go away and not say good-by to everybody and tell them what a good time I have had, and I started telling very soon after I got Billy’s message saying he was coming.  I have thanked everybody for their niceness and kindness to me, and told every one I hope to come back next summer, and sometimes we have had little weeps, for they put their arms around me and held me so tight I could hardly breathe.  And I know now there is nothing as good as friendliness, and loving-kindness is more to be desired than all things else on earth, and I am going to try to make it grow wherever I live.  I will have a garden of it—­have it in my heart.

I am afraid I will always have some practical things in my heart, too, for of late I’ve been thinking about all that money Billy had to spend in cabling me from Europe.  When Billy wants to do a thing he never lets obstacles stand in his way, and he would have sent that cable if he’d had to borrow the money from the Bank of England at an awful rate of interest.  What he did do I guess was to get it from his mother.  She would take her head off and her heart out and hand both over if he wanted them, and it isn’t her fault that William, as she calls him, isn’t a ruined person.

I know she hated him to leave ahead of time, which he had to do to get here on the 15th, the rest not sailing, Jess says, until the 20th; but that’s William again.  He doesn’t waste time when he has anything to attend to, and I know exactly what he said to his mother.  He will make every arrangement and fix everything for them and then tell them good-by.  He isn’t much with words, Billy isn’t.  He acts.  There’s no fumble in him, and even his mother, who thinks his mold was broken when he was born and that the Lord never made but one like him, has to admit he is a high-handed person when occasion requires.  I don’t agree with his mother in a good many things concerning William, but in some I do.  I wish he wasn’t an only son.  An only son for a husband is hard on a wife.

The thing I have been thinking about most since I got his cable, however, is a certain thing that was in it.  I’ve worn the paper out reading it, and at first there was no argument in my mind, but it is coming, argument is.  And though I know it is a bad habit, especially in girls and women and disliked by the other sex, how can you help it when things are said that are not so?  Billy said, “You are engaged to me.”  How does he know?  I never told him so.  He hasn’t exactly asked me—­that is, in a way that I would answer him—­and he always got so choky when on such subjects that I changed them quick, and yet he announces that I am his, and with never so much as by your leave!

I am afraid, I’m terribly afraid, I am going to agree with him.  It’s a relief to have some things settled for you, and as he imagines I will always be falling overboard, he doubtless thinks he had better keep a life-preserver on me in case he isn’t near enough to jump in after me.  He knows if I ever agree to put one on I will keep it on.  I have a good deal of Father in me, and when I give my word I stick to it.