There were about a million cards, and mother glanced at the addresses and passed them round. But suddenly she frowned. There was a small parcel, addressed to me.
“This looks like a Gift, Barbara,” she said. And preceded to open it.
My heart skipped two beats, and then hamered. Mother’s mouth was set as she tore off the paper and opened the box. There was a card, which she glanced at, and underneath, was a book of poems.
“Love Lyrics,” said mother, in a terrable voice. “To Barbara, from H——”
“Mother——” I began, in an ernest tone.
“A child of mine recieving such a book from a man!” she went on. “Barbara, I am speachless.”
But she was not speachless. If she was speachless for the next half hour, I would hate to hear her really converse. And all that I could do was to bear it. For I had made a Frankenstein—see the book read last term by the Literary Society—not out of grave-yard fragments, but from malted milk tablets, so to speak, and now it was pursuing me to an early grave. For I felt that I simply could not continue to live.
“I—don’t know, mother.”
“You sent him a Letter.”