Dawn Eleanor Porter (free novels to read txt) 📖

nor hear nor think straight, Idon't think it's no hilarious offense to wish they'd hurry up an' getto where they could have all them handy facilities back again, an'leave their money to folks what has got their full complaint ofsenses, ready to enjoy life, if they get a chance. Oh, yes, I know youdon't know what I'm talkin' about, an' perhaps it's jest as well youdon't, Miss Dorothy. I hadn't oughter said it, anyhow. Well, I s'poseI've got to go write that letter to Keith now. Seein' as how you'vecome I can't put it off no longer. Goodness only knows, though, whatI'm goin' to say," she sighed, as her visitor nodded back a wistful-eyed good-bye.

CHAPTER XIX

A MATTER OF LETTERS

Susan said afterward, in speaking of that spring, that "'twas nothin'but jest one serious of letters." And, indeed, life did seem to bemostly made up of letters.

At the sanatorium Keith was waiting for spring and the new doctor; andthat the waiting was proving to be a little nerve-racking was provedby the infrequency of his letters home, and the shortness anduncommunicativeness of such as did come.

Letters to him from Hinsdale were longer and were invariably brightand cheery. Yet they did not really tell so much, after all. To besure, they did contain frequent reference to "your Miss Stewart," andgave carefully casual accounts of what she did and said. In the veryfirst letter Susan had hit upon the idea of always referring to theyoung lady as "your Miss Stewart."

"Then we won't be tellin' no lies," she had explained to Mr. Burton,'"cause she IS his 'Miss Stewart.' See? She certainly don't belong tono one else under that name—that's sure!"

But however communicative as regards "Miss Stewart" the letters were,they were very far from that as regarded some other matters. Forinstance: neither in Daniel Burton's letters, nor in Susan's, wasthere any reference to the new clerk in McGuire's grocery store. Sofar as anything that Keith knew to the contrary, his father was stillpainting unsalable pictures in the Burton home-stead studio.

But even these were not all the letters that spring. There were theletters of John McGuire from far-away France—really wonderfulletters—letters that brought to the little New England town the verybreath of the battle-field itself, the smell of its smoke, the shrieksof its shells. And with Mr. Burton, with Susan, with the wholeneighborhood indeed, Mrs. McGuire shared them. They were even printedoccasionally in the town's weekly newspaper. And they were talked ofeverywhere, day in and day out. No wonder, then, that, to Susan, thespring seemed but a "serious of letters."

It was in May that the great Paris doctor was expected; but late inApril came a letter from Dr. Stewart saying that, owing to warconditions, the doctor had been delayed. He would not reach thiscountry now until July—which meant two more months of weary waitingfor Keith and for Keith's friends at home.

It was just here that Susan's patience snapped.

"When you get yourself screwed up to stand jest so much, an' then theycome along with jest a little more, somethin's got to break, I tellyou. Well, I've broke."

Whether as a result of the "break" or not, Susan did not say, neitherdid she mention whether it was to assuage her own grief or toalleviate Keith's; but whatever it was, Susan wrote these verses andsent them to Keith:

BY THE DAY

 When our back is nigh to breakin',

 An' our strength is nearly gone,

 An' along there comes the layin'

 Of another burden on—

 If we'll only jest remember,

 No matter what's to pay,

 That 'tisn't yet December,

 An' we're livin' by the day.

'Most any one can stand it—

 What jest TO-DAY has brought.

 It's when we try to lump it,

 An' take it by the lot!

 Why, any back would double,

 An' any legs'll bend,

 If we pile on all the trouble

 Meant to last us till the end!

 So if we'll jest remember,

 Half the woe from life we'll rob

 If we'll only take it "by the day,"

 An' not live it "by the job."

"Of course that ''tisn't yet December' is poem license, and hain'treally got much sense to it," wrote Susan in the letter she sent withthe verses. "I put it in mostly to rhyme with 'remember.' (Theresimply wasn't a thing to rhyme with that word!) But, do you know,after I got it down I saw it really could mean somethin', after all—kind of diabolical-like for the end of life, you know, like Decemberis the end of the year.

"Well, anyhow, they done me lots of good, them verses did, an' I hopethey will you."

In June Dorothy Parkman was graduated from the Hinsdale Academy. Both

Mr. Burton and Susan attended the exercises, though not together. Then

Susan sat down and wrote a glowing account of the affair to Keith,

dilating upon the fine showing that "your Miss Stewart" made.

"It can't last forever, of course—this subtractin' Miss Stewart'sname for Dorothy Parkman," she said to Mr. Burton, when she handed himthe letter to mail. "But I'm jest bound an' determined it shall lasttill that there Paris doctor gets his hands on him. An' she ain'tgoin' back now to her father's for quite a spell—Miss Dorothy, Imean," further explained Susan. "I guess she don't want to take nochances herself of his findin' out—jest yet," declared Susan, with asage wag of her head. "Anyhow, she's had an inspiration to go see agirl down to the beach, an' she's goin'. So we're safe for a while.But, oh, if July'd only hurry up an' come!"

And yet, when July came—

They were so glad, afterward, that Dr. Stewart wrote the letter thatin a measure prepared them for the bad news. He wrote the day beforethe operation. He said that the great oculist was immensely interestedin the case and eager to see what he could do—though he could holdout no sort of promise that he would be able to accomplish the desiredresults. Dr. Stewart warned them, therefore, not to expect anything—though, of course, they might hope. Hard on the heels of