CHAPTER XVI
FRANCES READS MY BOOK.
A great extravagance of mine lies in the fact that I pay my board here, for the sake of Mrs. Milliken, and take a good many of my meals outside, for mine. Strange as it may seem to the inveterately domestic, I enjoy a little table of my own, with a paper or a book beside me and the utter absence of the "please pass the butter" or "I'll trouble you for the hash" of the boarding-house.
Hence, I rose from my chair for another refection outside and debated as to whether I might venture out without my overcoat, when Frieda came out of Frances's room and penetrated mine.
"She is all right now," I was informed. "Her headache has quite left her, and Madame Smith has been in to inform her that the shop is to be opened to-morrow. So I have told Frances she had better continue to lie down and have a good rest. I may come in again, later this afternoon, for a cup of tea."
"You are a million times welcome to it," I said, "but you will have to make it yourself. I have to go over to my sister's where there is another blessed birthday. I shall have to go out now and pick out a teddy bear or a Noah's ark. I am afraid they will keep me until late. Give Frances my love and insist on her going out to-morrow evening with us, to Camus."
"Very well, I certainly will," answered Frieda, bending over with much creaking of corset bones. "What are these books on the floor? You ought to be ashamed of yourself for ill-treating valuable, clean volumes."
"They may be clean, but I doubt their value," I said. "They're only copies of the 'Land o' Love.'"
"What a pretty cover design, but the girl's nose is out of drawing. Sit right down and sign one of them for me and I want to take another to Frances. It will help her to pass away the time."
I obeyed, decorating a blank page with my illegible hieroglyphics, and repeated the process on a second copy for Frances, after which I departed.