“I’m afraid I couldn’t—buy joy, even if you gave me your penny, Uncle Jimmie.”
“You might try. My penny might not be like other pennies. On the other hand, your thoughts might be worth a fortune to me.”
“I’m afraid they wouldn’t be worth anything to anybody.”
“You simply don’t know what I am capable of making out of them.”
“I wish I could make something out of them,” 248 Eleanor said so miserably that Jimmie was filled with compunction for having tired her out, and hailed a passing taxi in which to whiz her home again.
“I have found out that Uncle Peter is spending all his time with Aunt Beulah,” she wrote in her diary that evening. “It is beautiful of him to try to help her through this period of nervous collapse, and just like him, but I don’t understand why it is that he doesn’t come and tell me about it, especially since he is getting so tired. He ought to know that I love him so dearly and deeply that I could help him even in helping her. It isn’t like him not to share his anxieties with me. Aunt Beulah is a grown up woman, and has friends and doctors and nurses, and every one knows her need. It seems to me that he might think that I have no one but him, and that whatever might lie heavy on my heart I could only confide in him. I have always told him everything. Why doesn’t it occur to him that I might have something to tell him now? Why doesn’t he come to me?
“I am afraid he will get sick. He needs a good deal of exercise to keep in form. If he doesn’t 249 have a certain amount of muscular activity his digestion is not so good. There are two little creases between his eyes that I never remember seeing there before. I asked him the other night when he was here with Aunt Beulah if his head ached, and he said ‘no,’ but Aunt Beulah said her head ached almost all the time. Of course, Aunt Beulah is important, and if Uncle Peter is trying to bring her back to normality again she is important to him, and that makes her important to me for his sake also, but nobody in the world is worth the sacrifice of Uncle Peter. Nobody, nobody.
“I suppose it’s a part of his great beauty that he should think so disparagingly of himself. I might not love him so well if he knew just how dear and sweet and great his personality is. It isn’t so much what he says or does, or even the way he looks that constitutes his charm, it’s the simple power and radiance behind his slightest move. Oh! I can’t express it. He doesn’t think he is especially fine or beautiful. He doesn’t know what a waste it is when he spends his strength upon somebody who isn’t as noble in character as he is,—but I know, and it makes me wild to think 250 of it. Oh! why doesn’t he come to me? My vacation is almost over, and I don’t see how I could bear going back to school without one comforting hour of him alone.
“I intended to write a detailed account of my vacation, but I can not. Uncle Jimmie has certainly tried to make me happy. He is so funny and dear. I could have so much fun with him if I were not worried about Uncle Peter!