The Sick-a-Bed Lady: And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only BusinessAbbott, Eleanor Hallowell
General
The Sick-a-Bed Lady: And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business
Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell
Fiction; Short stories
A little acridly she thrust both her list and her hands into the side
pockets of her riding skirt.
"What kind of a list did you think I would make out?" she asked sharply.
"Something all about machinery? And getting a contract for city paving
stones? Or publicly protesting the new football rules? Goodness! Does it
have to be a 'wise' list? Does it have to be a worthy list? Something
that would really look commendable in a church magazine? This was all
your idea, you know! You asked me, didn't you, to write out, just for
fun, the things I'd got to have before I'd be willing to die?"
"Oh, come now," laughed the man. "Please don't get stuffy about it. You
surprised me so about stroking the lion's face that I simply had to
chaff you a little. Truly, I care a great deal about seeing that list.
When you got off the train that day it rattled me a confounded lot to
see that your camping togs were cut out of exactly the same piece of
cloth that mine were. Professor Ellis and his wife and Doctor Andrews
jollied me a good bit about it in fact, but--hang it all--it's beginning
to dawn on me rather cozily, though I admit still embarrassingly, that
maybe your mind and mine are cut out of the same piece of cloth, too.
Please let me see what you've written!"
With a grimace that was half reluctance, half defiance, the young woman
pulled the paper from her pocket, smoothed it out on her knees for an
instant and handed it to him.
"Oh, very well, then," she said. "Help yourself to the only authentic
list of my 'Heart's Desires.'" Then suddenly her whole face brightened
with amusement and she shook a sun-browned finger threateningly at him.
"Now remember," she warned him, "I don't have to justify this list, no
matter how trivial it sounds, no matter how foolish even; it is excuse
enough for it--it is dignity enough for it, that it happens to be so."
"Yes, surely," acknowledged the man.
Either consciously or unconsciously--then--he took off his battered
slouch hat and placed it softly on the seat beside him. The act gave the
very faintest possible suggestion of reverence to the joke. Then, rather
slowly and hesitatingly, after the manner of a man who is not specially
accustomed to reading aloud, he began:
[Illustration: "Is--a--pink--sash--exactly a--a--passion?"]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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