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FLAMING

YOUTH

119

James has no appeal for her; of that I am satisfied. It will not be he who interprets for her her womanhood. Perhaps it will not be anyone. Nevertheless, our proud Dee has grown inexplicably docile, almost meek. And Jimmy inspires me with a daily desire to kick him, by adopting a condescending attitude toward her, as if he were doing quite a noble thing in marrying her. Such is the position in which she has been put by that infernal ‘Dangerfield Dip’ episode, as it is generally called. In some way, though I don’t know how, the engagement was the result of that party. From what I can learn, the swim au naturel was playful rather than vicious; but the

scandal has been lively.

There was a strange passage

between Dee and a workman who seems to be a gentleman under cover, which puzzled me.

Disturbs me, too, a bit.

. . . How you may be laughing at all this, my darling, with your wider, deeper vision! “Holiday Knoll will be duller when Dee leaves. To me it has been an empty shell since your bright spirit went out of it. Yet I derive my sad satisfactions in looking after the girls as best I may and in trying to make myself hold to the belief of some intangible contact with you through these letters. Ralph is at home very little. When Pat comes back the place will liven up again. Perhaps my tired old ears will recapture from her some of the music of life with which you filled the place. . . . I wish that Dee were less still and self-contained.

She doesn’t

talk to me

any

more;

not as she

used to.” To all the Fentriss household Dee was a puzzle in the days following her engagement, not less to herself, Oster~

hout suspected, than to the others. schoo], because

of an

outbreak

Home early from

of scarlet fever there,