gative of youth. Age teaches
us to treasure it and sustain it, to guard it as we'd guard a lonely
flame against the winds of the world. But the flame goes out, and we
grope on through the darkness wondering why there can never be
another....

I wonder if Lady Alicia is as cold as she seems? For she has the
appearance of keeping her emotions in an ice-box of indifferency, the
same as city florists keep their flowers chilled for commercial
purposes. Lady Allie, I'm sure, is fond of my little Dinkie. Yet
there's a note of condescension in her affection, for even in what
seems like an impulse of adoration her exclamation nearly always is
"Oh, you lovable little rabbit!" or, if not that, it's likely to be
"You adorable little donkey you!" She says it very prettily, of
course, setting it to music almost with that melodious English drawl
of hers. She is, she must be, a very fascinating woman. But at the
first tee, friendship ends, as the golf-nuts say.

...I asked Peter the other day what he regarded as my besetting sin
and the brute replied: "Topping the box." I told him I didn't quite
get the idea. "A passion to produce a good impression," he explained,
"by putting all your biggest mental strawberries on the top!"

"That sounds suspiciously like trying to be a Smart Aleck," I
retorted.

"It may sound that way, but it isn't. You're so mentally alive, I
mean, that you've simply got to be slightly acrobatic. And it's as
natural, of course, as a child's dancing."

But Peter is wrong. I've been out of the world so long that I've a
dread of impressing people as stupid, as being a clodhopper. And if
trying hard not to be thought that is "topping the box," I suppose I'm
guilty.

"You are also not without vanity," Peter judicially continued. "But
every naturally beautiful woman has a right to that." And I proved
Peter's contention by turning shell-pink even under my sunburn and
feeling a warm little runway of pleasure creep up through my carcass,
for the homeliest old prairie-hen that ever made a pinto shy, I
suppose, loves to be told that she's beautiful.

Peter, of course, is a conscienceless liar, but I can't help liking
him, and he'll always nest warm in the ashes of my heart....

There's one thing I must do, as soon as I have the chance, and that is
get in to a dentist and have my teeth attended to. And now that I'm so
much thinner I want a new and respectable pair of corsets. I've been
studying my face in the glass,