Bab a Sub-Deb Part 30

As I record this awfull day, dear Dairy, there comes again into my mind the thought that I DO NOT BELONG HERE. I am not like them. I do not even resemble them in features. And, if I belonged to them, would they not treat me with more consideration and less disipline? Who, in the Familey, has my noze?

It is all well enough for Hannah to observe that I was a pretty baby with fat cheaks. May not Hannah herself, for some hiden reason, have brought me here, taking away the real I to perhaps languish unseen and "waste my sweetness on the dessert air"? But that way lies madness.

Life must be made the best of as it is, and not as it might be or indeed ought to be.

Father promised before he left that I was not to be scolded, as I felt far from well, and was drinking water about every minute.

"I just want to lie here and think about things," I said, when he was going. "I seem to have so many thoughts. And father----"

"Yes, chicken."

"If I need any help to carry out a plan I have, will you give it to me, or will I have to go to totle strangers?"

"Good gracious, Bab!" he exclaimed. "Come to me, of course."

"And you'll do what you're told?"

He looked out into the hall to see if mother was near. Then, dear Dairy, he turned to me and said:

"I always have, Bab. I guess I'll run true to form."

JANUARY 23RD. Much better today. Out and around. Familey (mother and Sis) very dignafied and nothing much to say. Evadently have promised father to restrain themselves. Father rushed and not coming home to dinner.

Beresford on edge of proposeing. Sis very jumpy.

LATER: Jane Raleigh is home for her couzin's wedding! Is coming over. We shall take a walk, as I have much to tell her.

6 P. M. What an afternoon! How shall I write it? This is a Milestone in my Life.

I have met him at last. Nay, more. I have been in his dressing room, conversing as though acustomed to such things all my life. I have conceled under the mattress a real photograph of him, beneath which he has written, "Yours always, Adrian Egleston."

I am writing in bed, as the room is chilley--or I am--and by putting out my hand I can touch His pictured likeness.

Jane came around for me this afternoon, and mother consented to a walk.

I did not have a chance to take Sis's pink hat, as she keeps her door locked now when not in her room. Which is rediculous, because I am not her tipe, and her things do not suit me very well anyhow. And I have never borowed anything but gloves and handkercheifs, except Maidie's dress and the hat.

She had, however, not locked her bathroom, and finding a bunch of violets in the washbowl I put them on. It does not hurt violets to wear them, and anyhow I knew Carter Brooks had sent them and she ought to wear only Beresford's flowers if she means to marry him.

Jane at once remarked that I looked changed.

"Naturaly," I said, in a BLASE maner.

"If I didn't know you, Bab," she observed, "I would say that you are rouged."

I became very stiff and distant at that. For Jane, although my best friend, had no right to be suspicous of me.

"How do I look changed?" I demanded.

"I don't know. You--Bab, I beleive you are up to some mischeif!"

"Mischeif?"

"You don't need to pretend to me," she went on, looking into my very soul. "I have eyes. You're not decked out this way for ME."

I had meant to tell her nothing, but spying just then a man ahead who walked like Adrian, I was startled. I cluched her arm and closed my eyes.

"Bab!" she said.

The man turned, and I saw it was not he. I breathed again. But Jane was watching me, and I spoke out of an overflowing Heart.

"For a moment I thought--Jane, I have met THE ONE at last."

"Barbara!" she said, and stopped dead. "Is it any one I know?"

"He is an Actor."

"Ye G.o.ds!" said Jane, in a tence voice. "What a tradgedy!"

"Tradgedy indeed," I was compeled to admit. "Jane, my Heart is breaking.

I am not alowed to see him. It is all off, forever."

"Darling!" said Jane. "You are trembling all over. Hold on to me. Do they disaprove?"

"I am never to see him again. Never."

The bitterness of it all overcame me. My eyes sufused with tears.

But I told her, in broken accents, of my determination to stick to him, no matter what. "I might never be Mrs. Adrian Egleston, but----"

"Adrian Egleston!" she cried, in amazement. "Why BARBARA, you lucky Thing!"

So, finding her fuller of simpathy than usual, I violated my Vow of Silence and told her all.

And, to prove the truth of what I said, I showed her the sachet over my heart containing his rose.

"It's perfectly wonderfull," Jane said, in an awed tone. "You beat anything I've ever known for Adventures. You are the tipe men like, for one thing. But there is one thing I could not stand, in your place--having to know that he is making love to the heroine every evening and twice on Wednesdays and--Bab, this is WEDNESDAY!"

I glansed at my wrist watch. It was but to o'clock. Instantly, dear Dairy, I became conscious of a dual going on within me, between love and duty. Should I do as instructed and see him no more, thus crus.h.i.+ng my inclination under the iron heal of Resolution? Or should I cast my Parents to the winds, and go?

Which?

At last I desided to leave it to Jane. I observed: "I'm forbiden to try to see him. But I darsay, if you bought some theater tickets and did not say what the play was, and we went and it happened to be his, it would not be my fault, would it?"

I cannot recall her reply, or much more, except that I waited in a Pharmasy, and Jane went out, and came back and took me by the arm.

"We're going to the matinee, Bab," she said. "I'll not tell you which one, because it's to be a surprize." She squeazed my arm. "First row,"