This was not only radical, but revolutionary. Chatterton had never before furnished an inmate for a sanitarium. The word, indeed, was commonly understood as a polite euphemism for a lunatic asylum. The sentiments of the kin ranged all the way from Grace Wood’s anxious hopefulness to Cousin Jane’s frank curiosity concerning what new kind of craziness Lyddy had been up to now, to make John Bird feel like she had to be shut up in a private mad-house. She took my part, however, so far as to say, both to my face and behind my back, that I wasn’t a mite crazier than I’d been all my life; and if folks could get along with me this long it did look like a pity they couldn’t put up with me a while longer, and save disgracing the family. There was nothing the matter with me, Cousin Jane opined, beyond being spoiled to death, and lazy; and, anyway, it was flying in the face of Providence to go on living if your time had come to die.
As to going North, she never did believe in wasting money on conceited Yankee doctors when there were so many struggling physicians at home, to say nothing of the heathen in foreign lands who were dropping into hell-fire so many a minute for lack of any kind of doctors, good or bad, to keep them alive until the missionaries could get to them.
“But it’s no use preachin’ to selfish ears,” she concluded, drawing her heavy silk wrap about her ample shoulders and settling her bonnet strings. “I’ve been wastin’ my breath, of course.”
It seemed a pity that she should, whether from my point of view or her own; so I smiled as sympathetically as I could, and offered my cheek for her farewell salute. She bestowed it impressively.
“Well, good-bye, Lyddy. I suppose I won’t see you again in this life; an’ in the other one failin’ wits won’t trouble us, I trust. I want you to know I don’t hold any of your foolishness against you, child: I reckon you never did have sense like the rest of us.”
She went out with her ponderous, firm tread, and Caro flitted to my side, her head thrown up, ruffling like an angry wren.
“Mammy Lil, its a shame you made me promise to be good! Do let me run after her and——” She caught my eye and broke into bubbling laughter, dropping her head on my pillows and snuggling her little nose under my chin.
“Of course it’s funny,” she admitted presently; “and if you will laugh, I have to. But I can’t see how she can be so wooden-headed and yet be alive.”
“She isn’t alive very much, poor soul!” I answered, soberly enough. “I don’t think anybody really lives except so far as they understand life—and people. When you think of it in that way, Cousin Jane has lived in a closer confinement all her life than I’ll be when I get to the asylum.”