Girls -- Fiction; Harpeth Valley (Tenn.) -- Fiction
Some people are so afflicted with energy that their days are
twenty-five and a half hours long. Mine are twenty-six just now. If it
were not for the fact that several hours each day I am under the
influence of Roxanne's repose, I suspect I would run down like a clock
that has exhausted its mainspring. Mamie Sue says that Belle says
Roxanne is shiftless, but Belle is unable to distinguish shiftlessness
from noble composure under difficulties. I told Mamie Sue that it
would be best for her to forget all that Belle has ever said to her;
and she is trying.
Still, though I understand it perfectly, it is positively queer to
hear Roxanne talk about what the great doctor is going to do for
Lovelace Peyton's eyes, and they haven't done one thing about getting
him here from Cincinnati. The Idol has gone back to the obscurity of
the shed, and I suppose he is making up some plan about the doctor,
while he is working with his furnaces and retorts and things, but he
hasn't told one yet, and it is two whole days. I do hope and pray that
my plan will succeed without his having to bother with a common thing
like money.
I have had to go to school these two days and then I have to study
medicine with Lovelace Peyton almost all of every afternoon, so I
haven't much time; but I think by to-morrow night I will have told
about a thousand dollars' worth of things about my father and I can
send it all off to Cousin Gilmore Lewis. The time the butler in our
North Shore cottage, summer before last, told the newspapers so many
things about the way Father and his family lived, he got three hundred
dollars for it; so it does seem that if his own daughter told almost a
whole small book about Father it would be worth at least a thousand
dollars to a big magazine that prints things about everything in the
world.
I heard Cousin Gilmore tell Father last spring that it wouldn't be
long before he got to him in his magazine, and I have two reasons for
wanting to beat the one who is going to write Father up. One is that I
need the money for Lovelace Peyton's eyes, and the other is that
before all this comes out about Father and the stolen steel patent, I
want to write about him like he might be, and ignore what the world
may consider him. I want to tell about him like I feel toward him and
not like I know people will think he is. If the weekly comes out every
week, they ought to print what I say about a week from Saturday, and
maybe it will take Judge Luttrell that long to get his prosecution
ready. The Judge doesn't work much harder than others in Byrdsville,
and I can trust him to be slow. Of course, I couldn't write a thousand
dollars' worth of things about just Father himself, but I am telling
all about Byrdsville, which is his present home, and how distinguished
and beloved he is in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account