CHAPTER XIII

Jehoshaphat the Golden! For two days Twickenham Town has been standing
on its head and wriggling its heels in the air, and nothing has been
talked about since it appeared except its appearance. Every tongue in
town has had its say, and everybody in town has been on somebody else's
porch and talked it over; and as for Miss Susanna, I believe she cried
the whole night through, last night. The first night she was too dazed
to take it in. The Twickenham Town _Sentinel_ had it on its front page
in the middle column in letters indecently large, Miss Bettie Simcoe
says, and it certainly did make a sensation: "Mrs. Roger S. Payne
announces the engagement of her niece Elizabeth Hamilton Carter to Mr.
Algernon Grice Baker, of Perryville, Wisconsin," was what the
Twickenham-Towners waked up and read on Wednesday the 1st of August,
and if the dynamite-plant which has made business so good for Buzzard
Brothers, the undertakers, had exploded, it couldn't have caused more
of a stir. Twickenham wasn't only amazed; it was indignant, and it
couldn't believe it was true. But it was true, for the next day Miss
Susanna got a letter from Elizabeth, telling her all about her
engagement and that she would be home very soon and bring him with her,
and it was the night of the day the letter was received that Miss
Susanna went early to her room and locked her door for a while (that
is, my door, for she is sleeping in my room during the August rush) and
cried all night long. I had to pretend I didn't know, for she didn't
want me to know how hurt and distressed she was that Elizabeth should
have so treated her, and as I didn't sleep any more than she did,
though, owing to very different feelings about Elizabeth, I made up my
mind as to some things I would say to her when she got back. And if
she has never read "King Lear" I will see that she hears it read before