Dressmakers -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
"You're a very plucky girl," remarked the doctor feebly; and he went
away.
Sally's shrug had been sincere. She would have preferred to do
everything alone; but to do so would have been to make Gaga fully as ill
as any over-excitement could do. They accordingly went about together,
looking for a flat. They discovered one at last in Mayfair; and
decorations were begun there. It was not a large flat, and the rooms
were not all large; but it was cosy, and the furnishing of it was going
to give Sally a satisfaction hard to exceed. The two of them exulted in
the flat. They walked through and through it. They saw the wallpapers
and the paint, and admired everything in the most delicious manner
possible.
And then the doctor's warning was justified. Gaga collapsed. He fainted
in the flat, overcome by the smell of paint and the excitement of
proprietorship. With the help of one of the painters Sally took him home
in a cab and put him to bed. The doctor arrived, nodded, and was not in
the least surprised or alarmed. Sally was merely to be Gaga's nurse once
more. It did not matter to the doctor, who had no interest in Gaga
except as a patient.
"It's rough on you, though," he said to Sally. He was a bald man of
fifty, with a cold eye and a cold, fish-like hand. He was interested in
nothing outside his profession and his meals. To him Sally was a plucky
little thing; but Sally could not find that he thought anything more
about her. She shrugged again. "So sorry," said the doctor. "Good-bye."
When he had gone, Sally frowned. Bother! All her plans were interrupted.
Her energies were subdued. Thoughtfully, she began to consider how far
she might act alone. She wondered whether she might persuade Gaga to let
her go out in the mornings or the afternoons. He _must_ do so, and yet
she knew he would not like it. Although the decision always lay with
her, he had the sick and nervous man's fussy wish to seem to make a
choice. He wanted to be there, to be heard, to announce Sally's decision
in a loud voice as his own.
"What a man he is!" thought Sally. "Big kid. Got to have a say in
everything. And he _can't_!" The last words were spoken aloud, so
vehemently did she feel them. "He can't, because he doesn't know.
O-o-oh!"
She beat one hand upon the other, in a sudden passion. For a moment she
had an unexpected return of hysteria. And as she took two or three
fierce paces Sally without warning felt dizzy. She clung to a chair; and
the dizziness immediately passed. It frightened her, none the less,
because she had been feeling unwell for some days, and she had a horror
of illness.
"Here, here!" she exclaimed. "None of that. _I_ mustn't get ill. Oh,
lor! If I was to get ill _wouldn't_ there be a shimozzle! Gaga'd go off
his head. And everything else--pouf!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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