“Really this house makes me ashamed of myself for being so discontented with my own. I find mine luxurious by contrast. Mrs. Ransom does keep it clean, too!
“Here the boys have played the deuce with everything. Even the banister rails are broken. The handles are off most of the doors, and the carpet in the ‘front parlor,’ where the boys take their meals and do their ‘home-work,’ has large burns in it from their experiments with fireworks.
“They are not bad boys by any means. They are a handsome pair, and full of life and spirits. They are simply uncontrolled, that is all. I confiscated a revolver from one of them to-day.
“Poor Mrs. Henderson remonstrates, and the boys laugh. She retires to darn socks and sniff. (She has a habit of sniffing which irritates Henderson.) Really to me it is infinitely sad to look at her, and to remember what a pretty girl she was when Henderson married her. She had such a bright pair of eyes in those days and roses in her cheeks. Now she is plain—very plain. Her greying hair is thin, and her eyes dull. Her face is sallow.
“As I write I think of another woman, who is not so much younger than Mrs. Henderson, and yet is as fresh and flower-like as a girl, and I think it would break my heart if I saw her fade and become what my poor friend’s wife is. Life is a great mystery. Why should some suffer so much more than others?
“This is a dismal letter, but you always let me talk to you of all in my mind, don’t you? I hope that Phyllis does not give you any anxiety. I told you that she had been writing to Captain Arbuthnot? I meant to write to him myself, but it got put off. Perhaps I had best let it alone for the present. Often it is best to do just nothing, isn’t it?
“Has Philip been over? Remember me to him when you see him, and tell Robert I love him well!
“As for you! whatever is best in me is yours already!”
Mrs. Barrimore read this letter in her bedroom with the door locked.
She laughed and cried a little over it, and finally did what most women do with epistles they greatly prize. She put it inside her bodice.