FullReads

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Sunday

I was very happy all the morning; so happy that I forgot my tonics, massage, and sedative tablets; but the doctor called at noon and spoke of the wonderful way in which my system responded to his remedies, so I said nothing.

Cousin Sarah forwarded me a letter from Richard Morton, who is superintending some surveying near a small town in Pennsylvania. He knows that I am not well and away from home on a visit to the country, but, of course, he is not aware of my exact whereabouts. It was just one of his gay, friendly letters, with an undertone of something warmer in it. Among other things he said:

How weak a thing is man! Now that you are so far away and I am
exiled in a village where there is but one post a day I suffer
pangs of hunger for a word from you. So far the one daily mail
would have been all too ample for your desires, since you have
not written a word as yet; but there is always the hope! I have
been speculating to-night upon the frightful risks and dangers
surrounding the man who is waiting for a letter. It seems to me
the very best postal service is inadequate to take care of a
letter from you to me! Think of the uncertainties and perils to
which it is exposed in transit! You give it to a maid to drop in
a pillar post-box, but she may forget and leave it in her
pocket, or she may lose it. Or say she drops it in; it must be
removed from the box by an ordinary human being who has no
conception of the issues involved in the rigid performance of
this particular duty. The letter is then taken to the branch
office of your section, then to the general post, and then to
the railway, where new dangers menace its precious existence.
The train may be robbed; and if a single letter is stolen it
will be yours to me. No man alive could resist a letter of yours
after he had once read one.

Is there not a note of tenderness here, a note that has crept in only during the last few months? But what if there is? It occurred to me after dinner that the question of his feeling for me is not the only, nor even the principal one to be considered. The point under advisement is, shall I allow him to love me when there is something better in store for him?

Miss Blossom had scarcely left my room this evening when I heard a pattering step and a hurried tap on my door. On my saying “Come,” my opposite neighbor slipped in and turned the key in the lock. It was an unconventional and amusing performance, but I didn’t mind. Somehow one couldn’t mind anything with such a spoiled baby.

“Good-evening, Zuleika!” she said. “No, you needn’t smile and raise your finger at me as if you were dying to tell me your name is Abigail! Miss Blossom has gone for the night, hasn’t she? I thought so. You know it’s the nurses’ ball this evening, and there’s only one attendant on duty in each corridor from now to half-past nine. May I have this big chair by the window? I am so bored with this place that it excites me even to think how stupid it is. I almost wish I had a symptom or two, just by way of sensation. Did you have Somnolina for supper? I did, and some time I shall make a scene in the dining-room when I watch the hundred and fifty dyspeptics simultaneously lifting cups of Teaette or Somnolina to their parched lips.”

“You ought to be ashamed,” I chided, “when you know almost every one who is here needs to be put upon a diet. You wouldn’t expect champagne, terrapin, and canvasback ducks?”