Miss Reed: “Oh, dinner! Dinner, to a broken heart!”
Miss Spaulding: “I don’t believe your heart is broken.”
Miss Reed: “But I tell you it is! I ought to know when my own heart is broken, I should hope. What makes you think it isn’t?”
Miss Spaulding: “Oh, it’s happened so often!”
Miss Reed: “But this is a real case. You ought to feel my forehead. It’s as hot!”
Miss Spaulding: “You ought to get up and help me put this room to rights, and then you would feel better.”
Miss Reed: “No; I should feel worse. The idea of household gods makes me sick. Sylvan deities are what I want; the great god Pan among the cat-tails and arrow-heads in the ‘ma’sh’ at Ponkwasset; the dryads of the birch woods—there are no oaks; the nymphs that haunt the heights and hollows of the dear old mountain; the”—
Miss Spaulding: “Wha-a-at? I can’t hear a word you say.”
Miss Reed: “That’s because you keep fussing about so. Why don’t you be quiet, if you want to hear?” She lifts her voice to its highest pitch, with a pause for distinctness between the words: “I’m heart-broken for—Ponkwasset. The dryads—of the—birch woods. The nymphs—and the great—god—Pan—in the reeds—by the river. And all—that—sort of—thing!”
Miss Spaulding: “You know very well you’re not.”