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Monday, October seventh. If this were a novel about some charming,
slender, pansy-eyed girl, how differently I would have to describe
the feelings with which I woke the next morning. But these being
only a few pages from the life of a fat, New England housewife, I
must be candid. I woke feeling dull and sour. The day was gray and
cool: faint shreds of mist sifting up from the Sound and a desolate
mewing of seagulls in the air. I was unhappy, upset, and--yes--shy.
Passionately I yearned to run to the Professor, to gather him into
my arms, to be alone with him in Parnassus, creaking up some sunny
by-road. But his words came back to me: I was nothing to him. What
if he didn't love me after all?
I walked across two fields, down to the beach where little waves
were slapping against the shingle. I washed my face and hands in
salt water. Then I went back to Parnassus and brewed some coffee
with condensed milk. I gave Peg and Bock their breakfasts. Then I
hitched Peg to the van again, and felt better. As I drove into the
town I had to wait at the grade crossing while a wrecking train
rumbled past, on its way back from Willdon. That meant that the
line was clear again. I watched the grimy men on the cars, and
shuddered to think what they had been doing.
The Vigor county jail lies about a mile out of the town, an ugly,
gray stone barracks with a high, spiked wall about it. I was
thankful that it was still fairly early in the morning, and I drove
through the streets without seeing any one I knew. Finally I reached
the gate in the prison wall. Here some kind of a keeper barred my
way. "Can't get in, lady," he said. "Yesterday was visitors' day.
No more visitors till next month."
"I _must_ get in," I said. "You've got a man in there on a
false charge."
"So they all say," he retorted, calmly, and spat halfway across the
road. "You wouldn't believe any of our boarders had a right to be
here if you could hear their friends talk."
I showed him Governor Stafford's card. He was rather impressed
by this, and retired into a sentry-box in the wall--to telephone,
I suppose.
Presently he came back.
"The sheriff says he'll see you, ma'am. But you'll have to leave
this here dynamite caboose behind." He unlocked a little door in the
immense iron gate, and turned me over to another man inside. "Take
this here lady to the sheriff," he said.
Some of Vigor county's prisoners must have learned to be pretty good
gardeners, for certainly the grounds were in good condition. The
grass was green and trimly mowed; there were conventional beds of
flowers in very ugly shapes; in the distance I saw a gang of men
in striped overalls mending a roadway. The guide led me to an
attractive cottage to one side of the main building. There were two
children playing outside, and I remember thinking that within the
walls of a jail was surely a queer place to bring up youngsters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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