Sunday, November 30.
Robin is better. This morning he woke quite free from pain, so mother has let him up again. Perhaps God did hear, in spite of the harping,—foolish Elizabeth!
Monday, December 1.
Mrs. Hudson is going, and, oh dear! we can’t afford it. It is all Ernie’s fault, too. How could she have been so careless!
This is the way it happened. We have had a visit from Mrs. Bo-gardus! No one would have believed it possible; no one really, I suppose, except Miss Brown and Robin, entirely believed there was any “sich a person.” But to-day her existence was proven to us. Let me begin at the beginning and explain.
Mrs. Hudson has been with us six months now, renting the second-story alcove room; and during all that time, whether the beefsteak was tough or the house cold, she has never personally complained. It has been rather,—
“My friend Mrs. Bo-gardus simply couldn’t endure such a draught as this. It would give her pneumonia directly. She is a very sensitive woman;—what I call a true blood aristocrat.”
“Is she indeed?” Miss Brown would murmur, antiphonically responsive. Miss Brown is meek, and meagre, and easily impressed.
“Yes,” Mrs. Hudson would continue, swelling visibly under the arrested attention of the entire dinner table (for everybody listens when Mrs. Hudson talks):—“That is what I should certainly call her. Now a soup such as we are eating this evening simply wouldn’t sit on Mrs. Bo-gardus’s stummick. It is too thick.”
“Her stummick is too thick?” queries Mr. Hancock, anxiously. He is a dyspeptic, himself, and very much interested in anything pertaining to symptoms or dietetics.