A Thoughtless Yes

by Helen H. Gardener

"Thomas C. Griswold."

I folded the note and laid it on my desk and took up a pen. Then, on second thought, I turned to the messenger and said, "Say to Miss Campbell that I will call at four o'clock this afternoon."

Before I had finished the sentence he was gone, and I laid down the pen and sat thinking.

How like Tom Griswold that was—the old Tom of college days—to write such a note as that and give it to a patient! "Sulph. 12"—and then I laughed outright at his interpretation of my desire for veracious relations between patient and practitioner, and re-read his note from end to end.

Then I read hers again. Neither of them indicated the slightest need of haste on my part.

I pictured a pretty little blonde—I knew Tom's taste. He had been betrothed to three different girls during the old days, and they had all been of that type; small, blue-eyed, Dresden-china sort of girls, who had each pouted—and married someone else in due time, after a "misunderstanding" with Tom.

One of these misunderstandings had been over some roses, I remember. They did not "match" her dress in color, and she was wretched. She told him he should have known better than to get that shade, when he knew very well that she never wore anything that would "go with" it.

He had naturally felt a little hurt, since he had bought the finest and highest-priced roses to be had, and expected ecstatic praise of his taste and extravagance. The "misunderstanding" was final, and, after a wretched evening and several days of tragic grief, five tinted notes of sorrow, reproach, and pride, they each began to flirt with some one else and to talk of the inconstancy of the other sex. They vowed, of course, that they would never marry anybody on earth, and finally engaged themselves to marry some one else, who perhaps, had just passed through a similar harrowing experience and was yearning to be consoled.

I remember that Tom smoked a great deal during this tragic period, that he looked gloomy, wore only black neckties, and allowed a cold to run on until it became thoroughly settled and had to be nursed all the rest of the winter.

He knew that smoking injured him, and he doubtless had an idea that he would end his misery by means of this cold, supplemented by nicotine poison. How near he might have approached to success it would be difficult to tell, if he had not met my sister Nellie at Christmas-time, and, after having told his woes to her, promised her, "as a friend," not to smoke again for three days and then to report to her. The report was satisfactory, and she then confessed that she had forsworn bonbons for the same length of time, as a sort of companionship in sacrifice.