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Page 14
Young people will bear a great deal of impertinence from an old lady,
but we had both gone further than we meant to. I closed Mr. Alger with a
snap, and went up to Harrie.
The day that Mrs. Sharpe sat up in the easy-chair for two hours, Miss
Dallas, who had felt called upon to stay and nurse her dear Harrie to
recovery, and had really been of service, detailed on duty among the
babies, went home.
Dr. Sharpe drove her to the station. I accompanied them at his request.
Miss Dallas intended, I think, to look a little pensive, but had her
lunch to cram into a very full travelling-bag, and forgot it. The
Doctor, with clear, courteous eyes, shook hands, and wished her a
pleasant journey.
He drove home in silence, and went directly to his wife's room. A bright
blaze flickered on the old-fashioned fireplace, and the walls bowed with
pretty dancing shadows. Harrie, all alone, turned her face weakly and
smiled.
Well, they made no fuss about it, after all. Her husband came and stood
beside her; a cricket on which one of the baby's dresses had been
thrown, lay between them; it seemed, for the moment, as if he dared not
cross the tiny barrier. Something of that old fancy about the lights
upon the altar may have crossed his thought.
"So Miss Dallas has fairly gone, Harrie," said he, pleasantly, after a
pause.
"Yes. She has been very kind to the children while I have been sick."
"Very."
"You must miss her," said poor Harrie, trembling; she was very weak yet.
The Doctor knocked away the cricket, folded his wife's two shadowy
hands into his own, and said:--
"Harrie we have no strength to waste, either of us, upon a scene; but I
am sorry, and I love you."
She broke all down at that, and, dear me! they almost had a scene in
spite of themselves. For O, she had always known what a little goose she
was; and Pauline never meant any harm, and how handsome she was, you
know! only _she_ didn't have three babies to look after, nor a snubbed
nose either, and the sachet powder was only American, and the very
servants knew, and, O Myron! she _had_ wanted to be dead so long, and
then--
"Harrie!" said the Doctor, at his wit's end, "this will never do in the
world. I believe--I declare!--Miss Hannah!--I believe I must send you to
bed."
"And then I'm SUCH a little skeleton!" finished Harrie, royally, with a
great gulp.
Dr. Sharpe gathered the little skeleton all into a heap in his arms,--it
was a very funny heap, by the way, but that doesn't matter,--and to the
best of my knowledge and belief he cried just about as hard as she did.
The Tenth of January.
The city of Lawrence is unique in its way.
For simooms that scorch you and tempests that freeze; for sand-heaps
and sand-hillocks and sand-roads; for men digging sand, for women
shaking off sand, for minute boys crawling in sand; for sand in the
church-slips and the gingerbread-windows, for sand in your eyes, your
nose, your mouth, down your neck? up your sleeves, under your _chignon_,
down your throat; for unexpected corners where tornadoes lie in wait;
for "bleak, uncomforted" sidewalks, where they chase you, dog you,
confront you, strangle you, twist you, blind you, turn your umbrella
wrong side out; for "dimmykhrats" and bad ice-cream; for unutterable
circus-bills and religious tea-parties; for uncleared ruins, and mills
that spring up in a night; for jaded faces and busy feet; for an air of
youth and incompleteness at which you laugh, and a consciousness of
growth and greatness which you respect,--it--
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