She put both hands before her eyes, and burst into tears.
CHAPTER X
THE VEGETABLE MAN’S DAUGHTER
Chariton Sanitarium, August 23, 1907.
Dear little Daughter,—You don’t know how nice it is to be able to write a letter all by one’s self. Dictating a letter to your home people is like eating by proxy.
I am getting better every day. Am sleeping without opiates, and am actually hungry for my meals. Those trying periods of faintness appear far less often, and my temperature is so normal that I am losing prestige with the nurses. It won’t be long now until I shall be home again.
I feel guilty every minute I stay away. Those cheery letters of yours tell only the funny side of housekeeping, but I know that there is another side, too, and that inexperience and hot weather and hard work are a serious combination. It is too big a load for one pair of shoulders. I was sorry to hear that the Duchess had gone; she promised so well that I felt relieved about my motherless children and my wifeless husband. I hope you will be able to get Mr. Hopkins’s daughter. If not, you had better go to the boarding-house for dinner and supper during the hot weather.
How is David? I think of him so often these torrid days. If his hay fever is bad, he ought to be sent nearer the lake. Watch him carefully, dear, won’t you?
There is little for me to write you. No news is sanitarium news, and I see no one but my doctor and nurse and a few people whose illness is the most interesting thing about them. I live on your letters,—the dear, funny letters that you must steal time from recreation to write. I read scraps of them to the doctor and a few friends I have made here, and they never fail to ask me daily if I have “heard from the clever daughter.” The cleverness I knew all about, long ago, but I am finding out new things every day about the sweetness and usefulness of that same daughter. Try to save yourself all you can, dearie. Why, oh, why, when you were choosing, didn’t you select a mother that didn’t “prostrate”?