"It's silly," faltered Felicia, "but I think—I—can't go alone—Zeb, you bring me my new Babiche, I can carry her under my arm."
Zeb handed the dog up proudly, patting her professionally. He scratched his head perplexedly as he stepped back from the wheel.
"Hey, wait!" he addressed the doctor as he started a second time. He fumbled in an inner pocket of his rough coat. "I was forgetting, Miss Felicia, a matter of a letter for you I found in Marthy's things—she sent it off at you this long time ago but it came back at her—"
He handed it up, thin, much creased and much bestamped and postmarked.
Miss F. Day
New York.
Or return to
M. Z. Smather
2 Montrose Lane, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Pretend you were the doctor if you like, the tired country doctor, mildly sorry for the little old maid granddaughter of your apoplectic patient—that queer patient who lives in that stone mansion some of those French refugees built over there across the Pine Plains. That's an easy enough thing to pretend, but a tiresome enough thing, too, for then you'll have to make believe you're urging your tired horse over those heavy roads to the railway station so you can get the old maid there in time for her train. She's quiet enough, in her seedy bonnet and shabby coat, a nice sensible body usually, only very self-willed. You know perfectly well she's going off on a wild goose chase and that she shouldn't be taking that fool puppy with her.
But oh, I hope you're good at pretending! For then you can pretend you're Felicia Day! Felicia Day sitting in a lumbering local train, quite unmindful of the atrocious rocking roadbed or the blurred spring forests that whirl past your smoke-glazed window; quite oblivious of all the terrors and discomforts of journeys past or journeys still to come!
For then you can pretend that you've just slowly pulled away the envelope that was so useless because of poor old Marthy's undecipherable handwriting and that you've kissed the inner wrapping that reads "Please send this to Miss Trenton (if that's her name). At once." And then—oh then, you can pretend you are reading the first letter you ever had in all this world and that it says,
Dear Felice: