time and until both have learned a few things they ought to know before
they get married. She is a vain, selfish, pretty piece of spoiledness,
and I don't believe she knows what real loving means. She is the sort
that wants what it hasn't got, and all the more if she thinks anybody
else is apt to get it. If she had any sense she would get a beau _pro
tem_. That is the best thing on earth to bring a man back to the
straight and narrow, and Whythe is the kind of man who needs to be
brought every now and then.

I gave her that for nothing one morning--I mean the suggestion in
general, though of course not personal--and she looked at me as if
trying to understand. And then something came in her face that must
have been an idea in her brain (her brain is slow), for, two days
afterward, she said she was going away. A week later she went to see a
rich aunt on her father's side who has a summer home somewhere and
corrals young men and compels them to come to it, Miss Bettie Simcoe
says. When she was gone a great weight seemed lifted off everybody,
and even the servants breathed better. As for Miss Susanna, she was
that lightened and relieved, though naturally not saying so, that she
looked ten years younger, and I know now it is true that some people in
a house are like fruit-cake on a weak stomach. They make life hard. I
didn't say my prayers that night. I just sang the Doxology three times
as loud as I could and jumped into bed. Praise is prayer.




CHAPTER VI

I have been here four weeks to-day. If there are any people in or