The girl from Hollywood

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Three weeks had passed. She had drawn out the week’s supply that Crumb had doled out to her to this length, and there was even enough for another week, to such small quantities had she reduced the doses, and to such lengths had she increased the intervals between them. She had gone two whole days without it; yet she did not once think that she could give it up entirely, for when the craving came in full force she was still powerless to withstand it, and she knew that she would always be so.

Without realizing it, she was building up a reserve force of health that was to be her strongest ally in the battle to come. The sallowness had left her; her cheeks were tanned and ruddy; her eyes sparkled with the old fire, and were no longer wild and staring. She could ride and walk and swim and dance with the best of them. She found interest in the work of her orchard, where she went almost daily to talk with the caretaker, to question him and to learn all that she could of citrus culture. She even learned to drive the light tractor and steer it in and out about the trees without barking them.

Every day that she was there she went to the sunny bedroom in the bungalow—the bedroom that had been her mother’s—and knelt beside the bed and poured forth her heart in blind faith that her mother heard. She did not grieve, for she held that sublime faith in the hereafter which many profess and few possess—the faith which taught her that her mother was happier than she had ever been before. Her sorrow had been in her own loss, and this she fought down as selfishness. She realized that her greatest anguish lay in vain regrets; and such thoughts she sought to stifle, knowing their uselessness.

Sometimes she prayed there—prayed for strength to cast off the bonds of her servitude. Ineffectual prayers she knew them to be, for the only power that could free her had lain within herself, and that power the drug had undermined and permanently weakened. Her will had degenerated to impotent wishes.

And now the time had come when she must definitely set a date for her departure. She had determined to retain the orchard, not alone because she had seen that it would prove profitable, but because it would always constitute a link between her and the people whom she had come to love. No matter what the future held, she could always feel that a part of her remained here, where she would that all of her might be; but she knew that she must go, and she determined to tell them on the following day that she would return to the city within the week.

It was going to be hard to announce her decision, for she was not blind to the fact that they had grown fond of her, and that her presence meant much to Eva, who, since Grace’s departure, had greatly missed the companionship of a girl near her own age. Mrs. Pennington and the colonel had been a mother and father to her, and Custer a big brother and a most charming companion.

She passed that night without recourse to the white powders, for she must be frugal of them if they were to last through the week. The next morning she rode with the Penningtons and the Evanses as usual. She would tell them at breakfast.

When she came to the table she found a pair of silver spurs beside her plate, and when she looked about in astonishment they were all smiling.

“For me?” she cried.

“From the Penningtons,” said the colonel. “You’ve won ’em, my dear. You ride like a trooper already.”