I promised Aunt Jule I would go to bed at eleven and it is way past that now, but I am all ready for bed and have just been writing this. Tomorrow Gordon is going to call up and what will I say to him? I just won’t think about it.
July 14
Gordon called up this morning from Chicago and it was wonderful to hear his voice again though the connection was terrible. He asked me if I still loved him and I tried to tell him no, but I knew that would mean an explanation and the connection was so bad that I never could make him understand so I said yes, but I almost whispered it purposely, thinking he wouldn’t hear me, but he heard me all right and he said that made everything all right with the world. He said he thought I had stopped loving him because I had stopped writing.
I wish the connection had been decent and I could have told him how things were, but now it is terrible because he is planning to get to New York the day I get there and heaven knows what I will do because Walter will be there, too. I just won’t think about it.
Aunt Jule came in my room just after I was through talking to Gordon, thank heavens. The room was full of flowers. Walter had sent me some and so had Frank. I got another long night letter from Walter, just as silly as the first one. I wish he would say those things in letters instead of night letters so everybody in the world wouldn’t see them. Aunt Jule wanted me to read it aloud to her. I would have died.
While she was still in the room, Frank called up and asked me to play golf with him and I said all right and Aunt Jule said she was glad my headache was gone. She was trying to be funny.
I played golf with Frank this afternoon. He is a beautiful golfer and it is thrilling to watch him drive, his swing is so much more graceful than Walter’s. I asked him to watch me swing and tell me what was the matter with me, but he said he couldn’t look at anything but my face and there wasn’t anything the matter with that.
He told me the boy who was here with him had been called home and he was glad of it because I might have liked him, the other boy, better than himself. I told him that couldn’t be possible and he asked me if I really meant that and I said of course, but I smiled when I said it so he wouldn’t take it too seriously.
We danced again tonight and Uncle Nat and Aunt Jule sat with us a while and danced a couple of dances themselves, but they were really there to get better acquainted with Frank and see if he was all right for me to be with. I know they certainly couldn’t have enjoyed their own dancing, no old people really can enjoy it because they can’t really do anything.
They were favorably impressed with Frank I think, at least Aunt Jule didn’t say I must be in bed at eleven, but just not to stay up too late. I guess it is a big surprise to a girl’s parents and aunts and uncles to find out that the boys you go around with are all right, they always seem to think that if I seem to like somebody and the person pays a little attention to me, why he must be a convict or a policeman or a drunkard or something queer.
Frank had some more songs for me tonight. He asked me if I knew the asthma song and I said I didn’t and he said “Oh, you must know that. It goes yes, sir, asthma baby.” Then he told me about the underwear song, “I underwear my baby is tonight.” He keeps you in hysterics and yet he has his serious side, in fact he was awfully serious when he said good night to me and his eyes simply shown. I wish Walter were more like him in some ways, but I mustn’t think about that.
July 15
I simply can’t live and I know I’ll never sleep tonight. I am in a terrible predicament or rather I won’t know whether I really am or not till tomorrow and that is what makes it so terrible.
After we had danced two or three dances, Frank asked me to go for a ride with him and we went for a ride in his car and he had had some cocktails and during the ride he had some drinks out of a flask and finally he told me he loved me and I said not to be silly, but he said he was perfectly serious and he certainly acted that way. He asked me if I loved anybody else and I said yes and he asked if I didn’t love him more than anybody else and I said yes, but only because I thought he had probably had too much to drink and wouldn’t remember it anyway and the best thing to do was humor him under the circumstances.
Then all of a sudden he asked me when I could marry him and I said, just as a joke, that I couldn’t possibly marry him before December. He said that was a long time to wait, but I was certainly worth waiting for and he said a lot of other things and maybe I humored him a little too much, but that is just the trouble, I don’t know.
I was absolutely sure he was tight and would forget the whole thing, but that was early in the evening, and when we said good
