"My God! Sallie, do you think I'm made of iron?" he said and walked out.
I went to sleep in the chair, and when I woke the sun was shining in my
eyes and Jane was standing over me in amazed consternation.
This morning at eleven he came back, looked me coldly in the eye without
so much as the flicker of an eyelash, and told me that Thomas was to
have hot milk every two hours and that the spots in Maggie Peters's
throat must be watched.
Here we are back on our old standing, and positively I don't know but
what I dreamed that one minute in the night!
But it would be a piquant situation, wouldn't it, if Sandy and I
should discover that we were falling in love with each other, he with a
perfectly good wife in the insane asylum and I with an outraged fiance
in Washington? I don't know but what the wisest thing for me to do is to
resign at once and take myself home, where I can placidly settle down
to a few months of embroidering "S McB" on table-cloths, like any other
respectable engaged girl.
I repeat very firmly that this letter isn't for Jervis's consumption.
Tear it into little pieces and scatter them in the Caribbean.
S.
January 3.
Dear Gordon:
You are right to be annoyed. I know I'm not a satisfactory love letter
writer. I have only to glance at the published correspondence of
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning to realize that the warmth of my
style is not up to standard. But you know already--you have known a long
time--that I am not a very emotional person. I suppose I might write a
lot of such things as: "Every waking moment you are in my thoughts." "My
dear boy, I only live when you are near." But it wouldn't be absolutely
true. You don't fill all my thoughts; 107 orphans do that. And I really
am quite comfortably alive whether you are here or not. I have to be
natural. You surely don't want me to pretend more desolation than I
feel. But I do love to see you,--you know that perfectly,--and I am
disappointed when you can't come. I fully appreciate all your charming
qualities, but, my dear boy, I CAN'T be sentimental on paper. I am
always thinking about the hotel chambermaid who reads the letters you
casually leave on your bureau. You needn't expostulate that you carry
them next your heart, for I know perfectly well that you don't.
Forgive me for that last letter if it hurt your feelings. Since I came
to this asylum I am extremely touchy on the subject of drink. You would
be, too, if you had seen what I have seen. Several of my chicks are the
sad result of alcoholic parents, and they are never going to have a fair
chance all their lives. You can't look about a place like this without
"aye keeping up a terrible thinking."