minute and tell Ada.


Well, I have told Ada, and here I am back in my room, laughing over the
result. I might as well have told the flour-barrel. Anything like Ada's
ease of character and inability to worry or even face a disturbing
situation I have never seen. I laugh, although her method of receiving
my tale was not, so to speak, flattering to me. Ada was in her loose
white kimono, and she was sitting at her shady window darning stockings
in very much the same way that a cow chews her cud; and when I told
her, under promise of the strictest secrecy, she just laughed that
placid little laugh of hers and said, taking another stitch, "Oh, well,
boys are always falling in love with older women." And when I asked if
she thought seriously that Peggy might not be running a risk, she said:
"Oh dear, no; Harry is devoted to the child. You can't be foolish
enough. Aunt Elizabeth, to think that he is in love with you NOW?"

I said, "Certainly not." It was only the principle involved; that the
young man must be very changeable, and that Peggy might run a risk in
the future if Harry were thrown in much with other women.

Ada only laughed again, and kept on with her darning, and said she
guessed there was no need to worry. Harry seemed to her very much like
Cyrus, and she was sure that Cyrus had never thought of another woman
besides herself (Ada).

I wonder if another woman would have said what I might have said,
especially after that imputation of the idiocy of my thinking that a
young man could possibly fancy ME. I said nothing, but I wondered what
Ada would say if she knew what I knew, if she would continue to chew