"
"Who?"
"I can't tell you."
"You can't TELL me! Barbara, I am utterly bewildered. I sent you away a
simple child, and you return to me--what?"
Well, we had about an hour's fight over it, and we ended in a
compromise. I gave up the Flask, and promised not to smoke and so forth,
and I was to have some new dresses and a silk Sweater, and to be allowed
to stay up until ten o'clock, and to have a desk in my room for my work.
"Work!" mother said. "Career! What next? Why can't you be like Leila,
and settle down to haveing a good time?"
"Leila and I are diferent," I said loftily, for I resented her tone.
"Leila is a child of the moment. Life for her is one grand, sweet Song.
For me it is a serious matter. `Life is real, life is earnest, and the
Grave is not its goal,'" I quoted in impasioned tones.
(Because that is the way I feel. How can the Grave be its goal? THERE
MUST BE SOMETHING BEYOND. I have thought it all out, and I beleive in a
world beyond, but not in a hell. Hell, I beleive, is the state of mind
one gets into in this world as a result of one's wicked Acts or one's
wicked Thoughts, and is in one's self.)
As I have said, the other side of the Compromise was that I was not to
carry Flasks with me, or drink any punch at parties if it had a stick
in it, and you can generally find out by the taste. For if it is what
Carter Brooks calls "loaded" it stings your tongue. Or if it tastes like
cider it's probably Champane. And I was not to smoke any cigarettes.
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