Sunday and sing
praises to God and underpay a poor little dressmaker. They said they
supposed it was, but I don't think they thought it very reverential in
me to speak of God in connection with a dress-maker and what she got
for sewing. I gave each one a list of their expenditures, with the
cost of everything on it, and each had a little left over after getting
their slippers and some sachet powder and a bottle of violet-water
apiece, and, after all, that brother of Miss Araminta's got a little of
the sapphire money. But it wasn't much. I saw to that. It's been
awfully exciting in Twickenham lately.

The event of the year is the MacLean party and the best of everything
is saved for it, and in itself it makes every tongue in town talk until
you wonder why tongues are the only things that never tire, and then,
lo and behold! two days before it came off back comes Elizabeth
Hamilton Carter, bringing her beau behind her, and off start the same
tongues on a new lap and no breath taken in between.

I wish Billy could see it, the thing Elizabeth brought back! He wears
men's clothes (very good ones) and he is twenty-seven years old, and
has large hands and feet and ears and a feeble mustache, but as a man
he isn't much. He looks like a hatter and is seemingly dumb, and he
blinks his eyes so continually that no one can tell their color. Also
he bites his finger-nails. I advised Elizabeth to get a beau _pro
tem._, but I didn't mean anything like that. If she wants jealousy to
bring Whythe back to her she should keep something on hand to be
jealous of. Elizabeth has an iron will and a copper determination, but
about as much judgment as a horse-fly.

Miss Bettie Simcoe's eyebrows haven't come down good since the night
the _engagees_ arrived. She has an explanation for the situation, as
she calls it, there never yet being a situation she couldn't explain,
and she says the engagement is a piece of management on the part of
Elizabeth's aunt on her father's side, the aunt she has been visiting.
This aunt is society crazy, and, knowing you can't keep step in society
without money, she arranged the whole thing. Anyhow, Elizabeth has a
gorgeous ring and a magnificent pin, and of course she ought to be
happy if diamonds and things mean happiness, but she isn't happy, and
for the first time since I met her I can't make her out. Before I know
it I am going to feel sorry for her, and then good-by to in-loveness
for me! I ha