“O mother dear! I think she is the wonderfullest woman ever could be! I know and you know that she loved the home in Washington Square beyond words, ’cause though it was all tumbling to pieces in spots and the things inside were getting so worn-out, she wouldn’t sell it even for heaps and heaps of money. I know her heart is just broken inside of her but the break doesn’t show on the outside, in her face, not the least littlest bit. She sits just as proud in her old ‘comfy’ wrapper as she used to in her beautifullest silk gown. Once I tried to say something nice to her, to sort of comfort her if I could, and she just looked at me so queer. ‘My dear, spare me. A Waldron never whines, but accepts what comes of either good or ill, as it is meant and sent.’ I’m so glad she doesn’t whine, nor complain. Granny Briggs does. Granny isn’t a bit Waldron-y, though Sophy is—even more than anybody I know. I think it must be the highest kind of aristocracy to be willing to give up one’s life to save another’s, and that’s what Sophy was. Oh! I love her, I love her!
“My Cousin Margaret is going to the hospital to visit Sophy the very first place she does go after her clothes come. Till then she stays in her rooms, there are several of them, and denies herself to everybody who comes. She’s had lots and lots of calls and offers of a temporary home but she doesn’t accept. She doesn’t need, she says; yet if she did she would accept very gratefully. Hasn’t she the realest, best kind of pride? Oh! I should like to be just like her, when I am old, only not so fond of putting on new clothes all the time. I heard one the bell-boys tell another that she was: ‘The great Madam Dalrymple, the highest-up there was in the world of fashion. That it was a prestige for this hotel to have her live here so soon after the accident, and would bring other patrons.’
“Cousin Margaret is going to take a cottage at Newport. That is a place by the sea, if you don’t know. She says it will be a big house with every ‘convenience’ in it, so I don’t see why they call it a ‘cottage.’ Cottages in California are so small and haven’t many rooms in them. Never mind. I’m learning things all the time that astonish me. I guess my education has begun already. I remember that Mr. Ninian said that ‘Education meant learning how to live, to get the best out of life.’ Seems if our Cousin Margaret has got a good deal of the best, since she can stand such an awful sorrow as losing her home and not ‘whine’ once.
“She seems more disturbed because her ‘man of business’ hasn’t called than by anything else. She hasn’t any money, course, just getting out of a burning house that way, not until he comes and brings her some. She has lots of what she calls ‘credit’ and the hotel folks are terrible polite to her, but she’d rather have the ‘cash in hand’ to pay in advance. She has never run in debt in her life. She says that is very ‘plebeian’ and she dislikes plebeian-y things. She sent Tipkins after that ‘man of business’ and he couldn’t get in. He said the bank-office was closed and nobody answered. There were a lot of folks standing around outside the office and he said maybe they had scared the man of business by a ‘run’ on the bank. He must be a funny kind of a man that would be scared by a few folks just running!
“Now I must stop for a few minutes. If there’s anything more to tell, after we’ve had the dinner the waiter is bringing, I’ll write it then. I’m so glad Mr. Hale telegraphed you, so you wouldn’t worry, after reading about the fire in the telegraphic column of the paper. Mr. Hale said that bad news traveled so fast that good news had to hurry up and catch it. He is such a nice man. He is going to bring his daughters to see me, soon as they are out of school for the year.
“Good-by, for a little while,
“Jessica.”
The letter was to be resumed and a most important postscript added. As the girl left the desk, eager for the tempting dinner being brought into the room and feeling her blistered fingers sadly painful from her writing, she was startled by the expression of Madam Dalrymple’s face.
The lady’s eyes were closed, she was very pale, the newspaper she had been reading had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor, and she looked as if, at last, the full force of the calamity that had befallen had crushed her beneath its weight. She neither saw nor heard the entrance of the waiter with his tray nor when Jessica anxiously demanded: “Oh! what is the matter?” did she answer.