fraid I wasn't ever going to fall in love. Three or four
times I have thought I was in it, but I wasn't, and I was beginning to
be sure I was the sort of person who doesn't fall. And, besides, it is
good for Billy, who, because he is twenty, thinks he is old enough to
have some things settled which there is no need to settle too soon.
Settled things are not exciting. I love excitement and not knowing
what a day may bring forth. Billy doesn't. He wants his ducks to be
always in a row.

Ever since he fished me out of the water-barrel sunk in Grandmother
Hatley's garden, when I was four and he eight, he has seemed to think I
belonged to him; and, though he doesn't imagine I know it and never
mentions it, he is always around when I am in danger or trouble, to get
me out. I suppose saving my life three or four times makes him feel I
can't take care of myself and therefore he must take care of me, but
that's a mistake. I have never had a horse to run away with me but
once. Billy did tell me not to ride her, and when she ran and would
have pitched me over her head and down a gully he caught her in the
nick of time and caught me, too, but that's the only time a thing of
that sort ever happened. He was real nice about it and never said
anything concerning having told me so and didn't make remarks of the
sort which other people rub in, but the next day the horse was sent
away. That's the thing which makes me fighting furious with Billy
sometimes. He doesn't say things. He does them. I wasn't afraid of
that horse and was going to keep on riding her, but the next day there
was no Lady-Bird to ride. The reason he sent her away was I wouldn't
promise not to ride her. Our summer homes are on adjoining places and
Horson, their stableman, a nice, drinky old person, lets me take out
anything I want, anything of Billy's, and, knowing he couldn't trust
Horson any more than me, he lent Lady-Bird to a man miles and miles
away and I never saw her again until she was a tame old thing I did not
want to ride. Billy behaves as if I were a child!

And then the very next winter I fell through the ice and he had to jump
in and get me out. He told me not to go to a certain part of the lake.
He had been all over it and tried it before I got my skates on, but I
forgot and went. A boy was with me, a skunky little rat, who, when he
saw the ice was cracking, tried to pull me back, and then he let go my
hand and flop I went in and flop ca