"BAB A SUB-DEB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

I searched my Past, but it was blameless. It was empty and
bare, and as I looked back and saw how little there had been in
it but imbibing wisdom and playing basket-ball and tennis, and
typhoid fever when I was fourteen and almost having to have my
head shaved, a great wave of bitterness agatated me.
"Never again," I observed to myself with firmness. "Never
again, If I have to invent a member of the Other Sex."
At that time, however, owing to the appearance of Hannah
with a mending basket, I got no further than his name.
It was Harold. I decided to have him dark, with a very
small black mustache, and Passionate eyes. I felt, too, that he
would be jealous. The eyes would be of the smouldering type,
showing the green-eyed monster beneath.
I was very much cheered up. At least they could not ignore
me any more, and I felt that they would see the point. If I was
old enough to have a lover--especialy a jealous one with the
aformentioned eyes--I was old enough to have the necks of my
frocks cut out.
While they were getting their wraps on in the lower hall,
I counted my money. I had thirteen dollars. It was enough for a
Plan I was beginning to have in mind.
"Go to bed early, Barbara," mother said when they were
ready to go out.
"You don't mind if I write a letter, do you?"
"To whom?"
"Oh, just a letter," I said, and she stared at me coldly.
"I daresay you will write it, whether I consent or not.
Leave it on the hall table, and it will go out with the morning
mail."
"I may run out to the box with it."
"I forbid your doing anything of the sort."
"Oh, very well," I responded meekly.
"If there is such haste about it, give it to Hannah to
mail."
"Very well," I said.
She made an excuse to see Hannah before she left, and I
knew _that I was being watched_. I was greatly excited, and
happier than I had been for weeks. But when I had settled myself
in the Library, with the paper in front of me, I could not think
of anything to say in a letter. So I wrote a poem instead.


_"To H----_
_"Dear love: you seem so far away,_
_I would that you were near._
_I do so long to hear you say_
_Again, `I love you, dear.'_

_"Here all is cold and drear and strange_
_With none who with me tarry,_