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 — John Shaqi
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
But more than all the other wise things he knew was the wise one about
smelly things. He knew that when you were very, very, _very_ sick,
nothing pleased you so much as nice, smelly things. He brought wild
strawberries, for instance, not so much to eat as to smell, but when he
wasn't looking she gobbled them down as fast as she could. And he
brought her all kinds of flowers, one or two at a time, and seemed so
disappointed when she just sniffed them and smiled; but one day he
brought her a spray of yellow jasmine, and she snatched it up and kissed
it and cried "_Home_," and the Young Doctor was so pleased that he wrote
it right down in a little book and ran away to study up something. He
let her smell the fresh green bank-notes in his pocketbook. Oh, they
were good to smell, and after a while she said "Shops." He brought her
a tiny phial of gasoline from his neighbor's automobile, and she
crinkled up her nose in disgust and called it "gloves" and slapped it
playfully out of his hand. But when he brought her his riding-coat she
rubbed her cheek against it and whispered some funny chirruppy things.
His pipe, though, was the most confusing symbol of all. It was his best
pipe, too, and she snuggled it up to her nose and cried "_You, y-o-u_!"
and hid it under her pillow and wouldn't give it back to him, and though
he tried her a dozen times about it, she never acknowledged any
association except that joyous, "_Y-o-u_!"
So day by day she gained in consecutive thought till at last she grew so
reasonable as to ask: "Why do you call me _Dear_?"
And the Young Doctor forgot all about his earliest reason and answered
perfectly simply: "Because I love you."
Then some of the evenings grew to be almost sweetheart evenings, though
the Sick-A-Bed Lady's fragile childishness keyed the Young Doctor into
an almost uncanny tenderness and restraint.
Those were wonderful evenings, though, after the Sick-A-Bed Lady began
to get better and better. A good deal of the Young Doctor's practice was
scattered up and down the coast, and after the dust and sweat and glare
and rumble of his long day he would come back to the sleepy village in
the early evening, plunge for a freshening swim into the salt water,
don his white clothes and saunter round to the quaint old house at the
edge of the ocean. Here in the breezy kitchen he often sat for as long
as an hour, talking with the Old Housekeeper, till the Sick-A-Bed Lady's
tiny silver bell rang out with absurd peremptoriness. Then for as much
time as seemed wise he went and sat with the Sick-A-Bed Lady.
One night, one full-moon night, he came back from his day's work
extraordinarily tired and fretted after a series of strident
experiences, and hurried to the old house as to a veritable Haven of
Refuge. The Housekeeper was busy with village company, so he postponed
her report and went at once to the Sick-A-Bed Lady's room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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