“Now, Marion, let me make you comfortable, and you rest yourself—you look awfully tired, and I’m sure you need a rest!—while I read you this.”
Then she would read one story after another, till I would get dead tired, but if I closed my eyes she would get offended; so I’d hold them open no matter how sleepy I got. Sometimes I couldn’t help laughing at the funny parts in her stories, which delighted her, and she would laugh more than I would, which would make her little dog yelp and jump about. Then when I cried in sad parts, she would get much excited, and say:
“Now I know it must be good. Some day huge audiences in big theatres all over the world will be crying just as you are now.”
Then her dog would jump up and lick her face, and I would say:
“Don’t you think that’s enough for to-night?”
Poor little Nora! She had hardly any money, but it didn’t seem to bother her a bit. Though I knew I would miss her, I advised her to take the steady position offered in Richmond, instead of starving here, and a few days later I saw her off for the South. She looked pathetic and awfully childish (in spite of her hair done up), and I felt more lonely than ever. I was crying when I got back to the lodging-house, and when I opened the door, Miss Darling was standing talking to some man in the hall. She called to me just as I was going up the stairs:
“Miss Ascough, here’s a nice young gentleman wants to meet you.”
I came back down the stairs, and there was that Harvard student, Odell. He had a wide smile on his face, and his hand held out. There was something so friendly and winning in that smile, and somehow the pressure of his big hand on mine felt so warm and comforting, and I was so lonely, that when he asked me to go out with him to dinner and after that to the theatre I said at once:
“Yes, I will.”
Thus began my acquaintance with a boy who devoted himself to me throughout his stay in Boston, and who, in his way, really loved me.