Red Pepper's Patients: With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in ParticularRichmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
General
Red Pepper's Patients: With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular
Richmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
Physicians -- Fiction
Of course once I am off on my travels I shall have no time for
letters. No, that isn't quite frank, is it? Well, I will be
truthful and say honestly that I am sure it is not best that I
should keep on writing. I am glad if the letters have, as you
say, helped you through the worst of the siege; they surely
have helped me. But now--our ways part. Sometime I may give
you a hail from somewhere--when I am lonely and longing to
know how you get on. And sometime I may be back at my old
home. But wherever I am I shall never forget you, Jordan King,
for you have put something into my life which was not there
before and I am the better for it. As for you--your life will
not be one whit the less big and efficient for this trying
experience; it will be bigger, I think, and finer. I am glad,
glad I have known you.
ANNE LINTON.
For the hundredth time King felt his heart sink as he thought of that
prevented last interview. His mother had prevented it. It was perfectly
true that he was out, and away from home--out in a wheeled chair, which
had been pushed by Franz through a gap in the hedge between the Kings'
lawn and the Wentworths' next door. Just on the other side of that hedge
the chair had paused, where Sally Wentworth, his friend of long
standing, was serving tea to a little group of young people, all
intimates and all delighted to have the invalid once more in their
midst. Under the group of great copper beeches which made of that corner
of the Wentworth lawn a summer drawing room, King had sat in his chair
drinking tea and listening to gay chatter--and wondering why he had not
been able to get Anne Linton on the telephone so far that day. And at
that very time, so he now bitterly reflected, she and Mrs. Burns had
made their call upon him, only to be told by Mrs. King that he was
"out."
His mother was unquestionably a lady, and she had told the truth; he
could not conceive of her doing otherwise. He knew that she undoubtedly,
quite as Anne had said, had made the call a pleasant one. But she had
known that he was within a stone's throw of the house, and that he would
be bitterly disappointed not to be summoned. She had not mentioned to
him the fact of the call at all until next day--when Anne Linton had
been gone a full two hours upon her train. Then, when he had called up
Mrs. Burns, in a fever of haste to learn what had happened and what
there might yet be a chance of happening, he had discovered that Ellen
herself had tried three times to get him, upon the telephone, and had at
last realized--though this she did not say--that it was not intended
that she should.
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