“I can. That magazine will be glad to print my pieces some day!
“I didn’t tell Mr. Carpenter I sent it. I wouldn’t get any sympathy from him. He says that five years from now will be time enough to begin pestering editors. But I know that some poems I’ve read in that very magazine were not a bit better than Wind Song.
“I feel more like writing poetry in spring than at any other time. Mr. Carpenter tells me to fight against the impulse. He says spring has been responsible for more trash than anything else in the universe of God.
“Mr. Carpenter’s way of talking has a tang to it.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“Dean is home. He came to his sister’s yesterday and this evening he was here and we walked in the garden, up and down the sun-dial walk, and talked. It was splendid to have him back, with his mysterious green eyes and his nice mouth.
“We had a long conversation. We talked of Algiers and the transmigration of souls and of being cremated and of profiles—Dean says I have a good profile—‘pure Greek.’ I always like Dean’s compliments.
“‘Star o’ Morning, how you have grown!’ he said. ‘I left a child last autumn—and I find a woman!’
“(I will be fourteen in three weeks, and I am tall for my age. Dean seems to be glad of this—quite unlike Aunt Laura who always sighs when she lengthens my dresses, and thinks children grow up too fast.)
“‘So goes time by,’ I said, quoting the motto on the sun-dial, and feeling quite sophisticated.
“‘You are almost as tall as I am,’ he said; and then added bitterly, ‘to be sure Jarback Priest is of no very stately height.’
“I have always shrunk from referring to his shoulder in any way, but now I said,
“‘Dean, please don’t sneer at yourself like that—not with me, at least. I never think of you as Jarback.’
