Once again I have been told that I am hopelessly in love with you. I would not have given any more credence to my father’s words than I had before, but he backs them up with such unarguable responses. In addition to a loss of inheritance, he says I have the symptoms of a boy wasting away for love. “If you keep up like this, my boy,” he said to me the other night, “I’m afraid we will have to bury an hairless young man.” (I think he meant heirless. We must remember he did come from England, which explains his inability at times to speak English properly.)
I wasn’t sure, Phyllis, what the symptoms of love were. Some ideas are pretty clear from the various novels I had read. But father squashed all of them and reversed them. I had always imagined a love-lorn lover to be meandering hither and thither, wasting away for lack of nourishment, plucking flowers at random, singing songs about death, despair, and other unhealthy psychological issues, and such odds and ends that are not normally found in the daily habits of men—such as, sometimes is told, work. Now my father said my habit of devouring a three-course meal for breakfast and lunch, and a five-course for dinner, my regular lounging around in the parlor, and my complete detestation for melancholic tunes and gathering colorful weeds were all signs of my advanced state of affections for you.
He could have fooled me. I’ve never felt so out of love in all my life. And yet, my father said that that is how it often appears. While I had my doubts, his inheritance argument won me over. Again I was steadfastly convinced that I love you. Perhaps you can see it between the lines if you look hard enough. Heaven knows I have a hard enough time seeing it myself.
It seems awkward for me to say these things when the novels had implied that I should be gushing with poetry and other sentimental sentiments. At this moment, however, the only I am feeling is a bit peckish. I think the maid has a cold steak in the icebox, which tempts like Salome’s dancing. By the way, do you dance like Salome?
Ghost written by George, Charlie’s friend,
Charlie T. Rothfeather.
