They cannot say, however, even my most protesting friends, that I am
not living in a perfectly proper neighborhood. The front of my house
faces, beyond the discouraged little park, a strata of streets which
unfold from lessening degrees of dreariness and dinginess to
ever-increasing expensiveness and unashamed architectural
extravaganzas, to the summit of residential striving, called, for
impressiveness, the Avenue, but behind it is a section of the city of
which I am as ignorant as if it were in the depths of the sea or the
wilds of primeval forest. I have traveled much, but I do not know
the city wherein I live. I know but a part of it, the pretty part.
There was something Mrs. Mundy wanted to say to me to-night, and did
not say. I love the dear soul. I could not live here without her,
could not learn what I am learning without her help and sympathy and
loyalty, but at times I wish she were a bit less fond of chatting.
She is greatly puzzled. She, too, cannot understand why I have come
to Scarborough Square to live, and I am quite certain she thinks it
strange I do not tell her. How can I tell that of which I am not
sure myself--that is, clearly and definitely sure?
I am not trying to be sure. It is enough that I am here, free to
come and go as I choose, to plan my day as I wish, to have time for
the things I once had no time for, and why must there always be
explanations and reasons and justifications for one's acts? The
daily realization each morning, on awaking, that the day is mine,
that there are no customs with which to comply, no regulations to
follow, no conventions to be conformed to, at the end of two weeks
still stirs and thrills and awes me a little, and I am constantly
afraid it is not true that I am here to stay. And then again with
something of fear and shrinking and uncertainty I realize my bridges
are burned and I must stay.
"It's pleased you are with your rooms, I hope, Miss Dandridge?"
Hands on her hips, Mrs. Mundy had looked somewhat anxiously at me
before going out. "If it's a home-looking place you're after, you've
got it, but when you first come down to Scarborough Square it made me
feel queer inside to think of your living here, really living. If
you think you can be satisfied--"
"I am sure I can be satisfied. Why not?" I smiled and, going over
to the window, straightened the curtain which had caught and twisted
a fern-leaf growing in its box. "I am a perfectly unincumbered human
being who--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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