I hope you're having a pleasant spree.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the wall-paperers is living here at the house with us just now. We use him so much it's truly a good deal more convenient. And he's a real nice young fellow, and he plays the piano finely, and he comes from up my way. And it seemed more neighborly anyway. It's so large in the house at night, just now, and so creaky in the garden.
With kindest regards, good-by for now, from RAE.
P.S.
Don't tell your guide or any one! But Helene sent Zillah's mother a check for fifteen hundred dollars. I saw it with my own eyes. And all Zillah asked for that day was just a little blue serge suit. It seems she'd promised her kid sister a little blue serge suit for July. And it sort of worried her.
Helene sent the little blue serge suit too! And a hat! The hat had bluebells on it. Do you think when you come home—if I haven't spent too much money on wall-papers—that I could have a blue hat with bluebells on it? Excuse me for bothering you—but you forgot to leave me enough money.
* * * * *
It was some indefinite, pleasant time on Thursday, the twenty-fifth of
June, that the Senior Surgeon received this second letter.
It was Friday the twenty-sixth of June, exactly at dawn, that the Senior
Surgeon started homeward.
Nobody looks very well in the dawn. Certainly the Senior Surgeon didn't. Heavily as a man wading through a bog of dreams, he stumbled out of his cabin into the morning. Under his drowsy, brooding eyes appalling shadows circled. Behind his sunburn,—deeper than his tan, something sinister and uncanny lurked wanly like the pallor of a soul.