Cope Finds himself Committed

Amy Leffingwell, having written once, found it easier to write again. And having strolled along the edge of the bluff with Cope on that fateful Sunday, she found it natural to intercept him on other parts of the campus (where their paths might easily cross), or to stroll with him, after casual encounters carefully planned, through sheets of fallen leaves under the wide avenues of elms just outside. Her third note almost summoned him to a rendezvous. It annoyed him; but he might have been more than annoyed had he known of her writing, rather simply, to a rather simple mother in Fort Lodge, Iowa, about her hopes and her expectations. Her mother had, of course, heard in detail of the rescue; and afterward had heard in still greater detail, as the roseate limelight of idealization had come to focus more exactly on the scene. She had had also an unaffected appreciation -- or several -- of Cope's personal graces and accomplishments. She had heard, lastly, of Cope's song to her daughter's obbligato: a duet in vacuo, since Carolyn had been suppressed and the surrounding company had been banished to a remote circumference. What wonder that she began to see her daughter and Bertram Cope in an admirable isolation and to intimate that she hoped, very soon, for definite news?

Well, not a few of us have met an Amy Leffingwell: some plump-faced, pink-cheeked child, with a delicate little concave nose not at all "strong," and a fine little chin none too vigorously moulded, and a pair of timid candid blue eyes shadowed by a wisp or so of fluffy hair -- and have not always taken her for what she was. She "wouldn't hurt a kitten," we say; and we assume that her "striking out a line for herself" is the last thing she would try to do. Yet such an unimpressive and disarming facade may mask large chambers of stubbornness and tenacity.