The list of work done by me from this time to the twenty-sixth of May is hardly credible. On that day I fell from the library steps while sitting on them reading, and hurt my foot and my neck very much. The next day I had a high fever, and was suffering severely from nervous shock. For nine days I was unable to do anything, and by that time the swollen condition of my throat was alarming, and I sent for Dr. Fleuhrer, a very clever surgeon. For fourteen more days I was under his care, then I began to improve, so that on
June 24th. I began an article on the Scotch Highlands for Mr. Mabie.
June 25th. I was writing on the same. Still in bed but mending slowly.
June 26th. Finished and copied the Highland article.
June 27th. I began “Jan Vedder’s Wife,” and on this day also received fifty-five pounds from London for work done for The Leisure Hour and the Sunday Magazine. Lilly was down at Bonner’s when the checks came, but as soon as I showed them to her, she said,
“Mamma, we have now plenty of money to furnish comfortably. Don’t you want your own home, Mamma?”
“O Lilly!” I cried, “there is nothing on earth I want so much. Dear, dear child, go and look for what will suit us. Go tomorrow! Go this afternoon!”
So that afternoon Lilly went home hunting, and I wrote happily on “Jan Vedder’s Wife” and Alice sat sewing beside me, touching my hand every now and then and smiling. On the twenty-eighth the flat suitable was found, and on the thirtieth I managed to get into a cab and go home. All was in confusion, but such happy confusion, that we did not think of sleeping until midnight.
In a week the new home was in perfect order, and I was able to be on the sofa, and to write “Jan Vedder’s Wife” more swiftly and comfortably. So sweet was home! So good was home, that I now felt all things possible, and really I had not been as happy, since Robert and I went into the wood cottage with its domestic ceilings, in Austin, and turned it into the prettiest and happiest of dwellings. Lilly and Alice furnished the rooms as they desired, and I was quite pleased and full of content.