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Page 38
After we had taken tea,--that is to say, after we had drawn around the
ironing-board put on two chairs in the front entry, made the cocoa in a
tin dipper, stirred it with a fork, and cut the bread with a
jack-knife,--after the baby was fairly off to bed in a champagne-basket,
and Tip disposed of, his mother only knew where, we coaxed a consumptive
fire into the parlor grate, and sat down before it in the carpetless,
pictureless, curtainless, blank, bare, soapy room.
"Thank fortune, this is the last night of it!" I growled, putting my
booted feet against the wall, (my slippers had gone over to the avenue
in a water-pail that morning,) and tipping my chair back drearily,--my
wife "_so_ objects" to the habit!
Allis made no reply, but sat looking thoughtfully, and with a slightly
perplexed and displeased air, into the sizzling wet wood that snapped
and flared and smoked and hissed and blackened, and did everything but
burn.
"I really don't know what to do about it," she broke silence at last.
"I'm inclined to think there's nothing better to do than to look at it."
"No; not the fire. O, I forgot--I haven't shown it to you."
She drew from her pocket the letter which I had noticed in the
afternoon, and laid it upon my knee. With my hands in my pockets--the
room was too cold to take them out--I read:--
Dear Cousin Alison:--
"I have been so lonely since mother died, that my health, never of
the strongest, as you know, has suffered seriously. My physician
tells me that something is wrong with the periphrastic action, if
you know what that is," [I suppose Miss Fellows meant the
peristaltic action,] "and prophesies something dreadful, (I've
forgotten whether it was to be in the head, or the heart, or the
stomach,) if I cannot have change of air and scene this winter. I
should dearly love to spend some time with you in your new home, (I
fancy it will be drier than the old one,) if convenient to you. If
inconvenient, don't hesitate to say so, of course. I hope to hear
from you soon.
"In haste, your aff. cousin,
"Gertrude Fellows.
"P.S.--I shall of course insist upon being a boarder if I come.
"G.F."
"Hum-m. Insipid sort of letter."
"Exactly. That's Gertrude. No more flavor than a frozen pear. If she had
one distinguishing peculiarity, good or bad, I believe I should like
her better. But I'm sorry for the woman."
"Sorry enough to stand a winter of her?"
"If we hadn't just been through this moving! A new house and
all,--nobody knows how the flues are yet, or whether we can heat a spare
room. She hasn't had a home, though, since Cousin Dorothy died. But I
was thinking about you, you see."
"O, she can't hurt me. She won't want the library, I suppose; nor my
slippers, and the small bootjack. Let her come."
My wife sighed a small sigh of relief out from the depths of her
hospitable heart, and the little matter was settled and dismissed as
lightly as are most little matters out of which grow the great ones.
I had just begun to dream that night that Gertrude Fellows, in the shape
of a large wilted pear, had walked in and sat down on a dessert plate,
when Allis gave me a little pinch and woke me.
"My dear, Gertrude has _one_ peculiarity. I never thought of it till
this minute."
"Confound Gertrude's peculiarities! I want to go to sleep. Well, let's
have it."
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