He gave me five dollars instead. Think of the Tradgedy of it!
As we went along, and he pulled my ear and finaly went asleep with a
hand on my shoulder, the bareness of my Life came to me. I shook with
sobs. And outside somewhere Sis and mother made Dinner lists. Then and
there I made up my mind to work hard and acheive, to become great and
powerful, to write things that would ring the Hearts of men--and women,
to, of course--and to come back to them some day, famous and beautiful,
and when they sued for my love, to be kind and hauty, but cold. I felt
that I would always be cold, although gracious.
I decided then to be a writer of plays first, and then later on to act
in them. I would thus be able to say what came into my head, as it was
my own play. Also to arrange the seens so as to wear a variety of gowns,
including evening things. I spent the rest of the afternoon manacuring
my nails in our state room.
Well, we got there at last. It was a large house, but everything was
to thin about it. The School will understand this, the same being the
condition of the new Freshman dormitory. The walls were to thin, and so
were the floors. The Doors shivered in the wind, and palpatated if you
slamed them. Also you could hear every Sound everywhere.
I looked around me in dispair. Where, oh where, was I to find my
cherished solatude? Where?
On account of Hannah hating a new place, and considering the house an
insult to the Servants, especialy only one bathroom for the lot of them,
she let me unpack alone, and so far I was safe. But where was I to work?
Fate settled that for me however.
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on Kings.
J. Shirley; Dirge.
Previously, however, mother and I had had a talk. She sailed into my
room one evening, dressed for dinner, and found me in my ROBE DE NUIT,
curled up in the window seat admiring the view of the ocean.
"Well!" she said. "Is this the way you intend going to dinner?"
"I do not care for any dinner," I replied. Then, seeing she did not
understand, I said coldly. "How can I care for food, mother, when the
Sea looks like a dying ople?"
"Dying pussycat!" mother said, in a very nasty way. "I don't know what
has come over you, Barbara. You used to be a normle Child, and there was
some accounting for what you were going to do. But now! Take off that
nightgown, and I'll have Tanney hold off dinner for half an hour."