Sally Bishop : $b A romanceThurston, E. Temple (Ernest Temple)
General
Sally Bishop : $b A romance
Thurston, E. Temple (Ernest Temple)
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
Deep shadows settled under Sally's eyes. The disease of
love-sickness has its common symptoms, the whole world knows them;
the hungry self-interest that wears itself out into a hypochondriacal
morbidity; the perverted power of vision, the hopeless want of
philosophy; not to mention the hundred ailments of the body that beset
every single one who suffers from the complaint.
Janet watched Sally closely through it all until, as the time passed
by, even she began to think that her calculations had been at fault.
At last, one morning, there lay on the breakfast-table in the kitchen,
a little brown-paper parcel addressed to Sally. She picked it up
eagerly and the flame flickered up into her cheeks as she laid it
down again, unopened, in her lap. Janet smiled across at her, but
said nothing. When breakfast was over, she let Sally go away by
herself up to her bedroom, while she remained behind and talked to
Mrs. Hewson. Ten minutes, she gave her; then she mounted the stairs
as well. She did not knock. She walked straight into the bedroom and
there she found Sally, seated near the window, the tears coursing
down her cheeks, while she held out her wrist and stared at a woven
gold bangle that bore on it her name in diamond letters. By the side
of the empty box was a letter, well-folded, so that it could fit
within, and on the floor lay the string and the brown paper, just
as it had been torn off.
Janet stood in front of her, hands on hips, warmed with the sense
of being a prophet in her own country.
"Are you satisfied now?" she asked.
Sally looked up; the pride of the woman in the bauble blent in her
eyes with the disappointment of the woman in love.
"Isn't it lovely?" she said pathetically. "Oh, it is lovely. I've
never had anything so beautiful before. But I can't keep it. How can
I keep it?"
"Can't keep it!" exclaimed Janet. "What are you talking about? Do
you think it was given to you to look at and then return? Why shouldn't
you keep it? It's got your name on. He can't give it to anybody else,
unless there's more than one Sally down his alley, which I should
think is very doubtful. What do you mean--you can't keep it? You make
me feel like Job's wife."
Sally unclasped the bangle and laid it back in the little velvet box
with lingering fingers. Then she picked up the letter.
"Read that," she said.
Janet swept her eyes to it. To her, as she read, it seemed to be the
condensation of more than one letter that had been written before.
A man, she argued, who gives such a present, is more than probably
in love; and a man who is in love, cannot write so directly to the
point in his first attempt.
This was the letter:--
"DEAR MISS BISHOP--"
(To call her "Sally" in diamonds and "Miss Bishop" in ink, was
ridiculous. Ink was infinitely cheaper; and if he could afford the
one, then why not the other?)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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