are long and once a week, but told him Billy would sail on September
16th, and get back before I did--that is, if I stayed until the 27th.
He said I could if I wanted to, and that he would come down for the
last week and take me back with him, and I was so happy I swirled him
around in my arms and danced a dance I made up as I went along, and
both Billy and Whythe Eppes were out of his mind when he stopped for
breath. And that night he went away. Also that night I almost cried
my eyes out for sorrow at his going and for gladness that he was my
Father. I wonder if all girls love their fathers as I love mine!




CHAPTER XI

Billy has been pretty good about writing. Much better than I have
been. I told him I would tell him all about Twickenham and the people,
and what they did and how they did, and I intended to do it, but that
is my chief trouble. I'm a grand intender and a poor doer. Billy
never promises and always does. He sends cards from every place, he
goes to, and a good many from the same place so I can see what he is
seeing, which I couldn't do if he wrote a book of descriptions. He
doesn't tell much about the cities and towns, most of which I have been
in myself and am glad he leaves out, but he writes awfully interesting
things about the places he pokes into by himself and the people he
meets, and I almost die laughing over his accounts of his sister and a
beau his mother has caught for her. She is a dandy-looking girl, his
sister is, and wears the smartest clothes I ever saw except Florine's,
and if Patricia has really landed a duke or a count or a thing of that
sort, his mother will have a wedding that will fit the fellow all