Elopement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction
"'And mamma will have me with her when she takes the mud baths. I
have to stay right there and see her step into the big tub of ground
peat and sprudel water. And there are snakes in it; anyway, mamma
feels just as if there were, and makes me feel so, which amounts
to much the same thing, because if there were, they wouldn't be
poisonous, you know. She sits up to her neck for half an hour. Black
mud! Then a nurse comes and lifts out one arm; pours water over it.
Then the other arm; pours water over it. Then mamma gradually rises
and goes into a regular sprudel bath. I'm just pervading about as the
dutiful daughter who is staying at Carlsbad with her mother. Every
third day sprudel is omitted.
"'Mamma has me with her when she goes to the springs to drink. Drinks
six glasses; stops after each glass to walk one-quarter of an hour.
We walk one solid hour before breakfast. I go with the procession
of drinkers, with mamma on my arm. Oh, that procession of drinkers
solemnly walking the time out!
"'I always look to see if there are any new men. You know I must do
something. And there always are some new ones. But they are watching
themselves, their insides, you know, to see what the mud baths
and the water are doing for them already. And I can tell you as a
positive fact that a man who is watching to find what a mud bath has
done to him is as uninteresting as a dummy. You try it and see, if
you don't believe me.
"'One day I did have a bit of a sensation. I was going along just
as primmy as prim, with mamma on my arm, when I suddenly felt as if
somebody were staring at me. So I turned my eyes, and there was Lord
Maxwell gazing right at me. He was one of the procession of drinkers.
He was limping. Perhaps he has rheumatism, or, rather, of course he
has it, or he wouldn't be here.
"'I wonder if I flushed. I couldn't positively tell. But I bowed, and
he raised his hat, and his face grew red. But the procession kept
right on. If I should see him, he wouldn't talk of anything but how
many glasses he had to drink; he wouldn't, because it can't be done
here in Carlsbad.
"'Mamma converses a great deal about her food. For some reason she
makes me listen, or pretend to listen. I know all about how she can
eat bread, but no butter, and stewed fruits, and once in awhile an
egg. You can skip this if you want to, but I can assure you I can't
skip it; I have to take it three times a day, and sometimes in the
night,--the talk about it, I mean. I have a bed in mamma's room, and
I have to be wakened and told how mamma detests bread without butter;
and she never did like eggs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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