Kitty Canary: A Novel

by Kate Langley Bosher

He had told me, when he was here, that if there was any way in which I could be of service in the right way to let him know and he would put up the money part, if I would manage the other part, and it would be a little secret between us and nobody else need know anything about it. When, last week, I heard Mrs. Richard Stafford say she would rather go to a hospital for a month than do anything on earth, I thought my chance had come. At the hospital, she said, a person had the right to be waited on and do nothing, and not think about food or servants, and not feel they were bothering other people by being sick; and while she wasn't sick exactly, a hospital would seem like heaven if she could be in one for a little while. She had laughed when she said it, and didn't dream of its being taken in earnest, but I took it in earnest, for the tiredness in her face makes me ache every time I see her, and right up in my mind popped the little secret Father and I and Miss Polk could have. What I wrote was this:

Father dear, will you please send me five hundred dollars, and if you can do it by return mail I will be very much obliged. The person I want part of it for is so tired that she might not be able to ever get rested unless she has a chance pretty quick to lie down and do nothing for a month, anyhow, and that is why I am in a hurry. Tiredness is a very wearing disease and if it runs on too long it runs a person into a state that is almost impossible to get out of, and the whole family has to pay up for letting it go on. Home gets hell-y when there's too much tiredness in it. What I want the money for is this: Mrs. Stafford is worn out. You know her. She was Miss Mary Shirley, and married a perfectly useless man when she was eighteen, and she is now the mother of seven children, and has a mother-in-law living with her, and also Miss Lou Barbee, who won't go away. And, of course, the man whom she can't turn out. He isn't bad. Just lazy, with nothing to him, but she loves him and I will skip over that part. She needs a rest and ought to have it. It's nothing but scrimp and scrape and strive to keep up appearances day in and day out, year in and year out, until she is all to pieces and the children don't realize what is the matter. And, of course, the Male Person doesn't, for he says that Woman's Place is in the Home. When he told me that yesterday (his heels were on the railing of his porch, where he generally keeps them, and his pipe in his mouth) I thought to myself that if he were mine he would have to get out of my home or prove he had a better right to share it with me than he had ever proved to his wife. But I won't get on that, either. I'll go back to Mrs. Stafford.

Half the time she doesn't have a servant, and all the time she has a mother-in-law, who is pie crust, and Miss Lou Barbee, who's a bagpipe, and with the doors locked and windows shut so no one can see, she has worked herself to death. What I want done is to have an invitation sent her from an old friend to be the guest of the hospital here for a month, and you will be the friend and she will never know it. Miss Polk, the superintendent of the hospital, will manage things. I've talked it over with her, and she understands. Miss Polk is a perfectly grand person. For Simon-pure sense there isn't her equal on earth. She and I have decided on what we would do if we had money. We'd have a Fund for Tired Mothers and Fathers. It would be used to give them a Rest before Death.

I hope you won't mind sending the money. I don't think you will, for everybody says business is so prosperous it's actually unrighteous, and it's in the Bible that you ought to put your treasures where you can find them again, or something like that. If you can't send it I know there will be a good reason for your not sending it, but I would like to have it by Monday if possible, so Mrs. Stafford can go to the Hospital the next day. Later, four other people can have their turn. It is to be used not for illness, but for Tiredness; for broken-downers and worn-outers who need being waited on and fed up and allowed to keep still. Miss Polk and I are going to decide on who needs a rest the most before I go away, and I send you for it, Father dear, an armful of squeezes and the biggest bunch of kisses the mail-man can take.

That was all I told him about the Rest money, but I said a little something about the picnic I thought I ought to give. Everybody in town has given something, and, having accepted, I have to return, and the picnic will be the best thing for Whythe and Elizabeth. I didn't mention the ex-lovers to Father, of course. Even to a father one doesn't have to tell everything in life.

CHAPTER XXI

I haven't seen Whythe alone but once since the night of the MacLean party, and then I stopped any tendencies that showed signs of being personal, and talked most of the time about the picnic which we can't have until late in the month. Every day is engaged up to the twenty-fourth. Whythe tried to talk of Mr. Algernon Grice Baker, but I cut that out also. Sarcasm doesn't suit him, and some day he might be sorry. The Superseder has gone, however, and every day Elizabeth passes Whythe's office, and every day Whythe happens to be at his window at the time of passing. They speak, but so far that is all. I am sorry the picnic has to wait so long. They are two silly children. Their fingers aren't in their mouths, but their heads are on the side when they see each other, and the thing's getting on my nerves. Almost any kind of sin is easier to stand than some sorts of silliness.

I wonder why I stay awake so much at night! It's very unusual, and I try my best to go to sleep, but I can't sleep. Always I am thinking of Mr. William Spencer Sloane and the things I would say to him if he were in hearing distance. Not one line have I had from him for more than two weeks. Not a card or a little present, which he usually sends from every place he goes to, or any sign to show he is living. I got so mad when I realized he hadn't noticed me for fourteen days that I couldn't keep in things which had to come out, and, seeing Miss Susanna was sleeping the sleep of worn-outness, I got up the other night and lighted a candle behind the bed, and on the floor I wrote a letter that maybe wasn't altogether as accurate as it might have been. I wouldn't have sent it the next day if it hadn't been for a letter I got from Jess, but after I read hers I sent mine flying.

I haven't cooled down yet from reading Jess's letter. I am not going to cool down until I see the cause of it face to face, and if Billy thinks it makes the least difference to me how he amuses himself or with whom he spends his time sightseeing he thinks Wrong! I was going to tear up the letter I had written him in the middle of the night for the relief of indignations and because in the middle of the night things seem so much bigger and harder and stranger than in the daylight; but after I read the letter from Jess I added a postscript to mine and almost ran down to the post-office to mail it, for fear if I didn't do it quick I mightn't do it at all. Ever since I sent it off I have been perfectly horrid, and I can hardly stand myself. I have put off trying to make Whythe and Elizabeth see how stupid they are, and as Elizabeth hasn't been very nice to me I haven't felt it to be my duty to show her what a goose she is. Neither have I told Whythe that almost any girl who adored him would do for his wife. As I don't adore I wouldn't do, and I think he is beginning to take it in. A dozen times of late he has told me he doesn't understand me. He does not. And never will.