red mouth lipping sort of twitchy at the edge of a bandage. Oh it was
awful! But Zillah didn't seem to care so much. There was a new Interne
there,--a Japanese, and I guess she was sort of taken with him. "But
my God, Zillah," I said, "_your_ life was worth more than that old
dame's!"
"Shut your noise!" says Zillah. "It was my job. And there's no kick
coming." Helene burst right out crying, she did. "Shut _your_ noise,
too!" says Zillah, just as cool as you please. "Bah! There's other lives
and other chances!"
"Oh, you do believe that now?" cries Helene. "Oh, you do believe that
now,--what the Bible promises you?" That was when Zillah shrugged her
shoulders so funny,--the little way she had. Gee, but her eyes were big!
"I don't pretend to know--what--your old Bible says," she choked. "It
was--the Yale feller--who was tellin' me."
That's all, Dr. Faber. It was her shrugging her shoulders so funny that
brought on the hemorrhage.
Oh, we had an awful time, sir, going home in the carriage,--Helene and
I. We both cried, of course, because Zillah was dead, but after we got
through crying for that, Helene kept right on crying because she
couldn't understand why a brave girl like Zillah _had_ to be dead. Gee!
But Helene takes things hard. Ladies do, I guess.
I hope you're having a pleasant spree.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the wall-paperers is living here at
the house with us just now. We use him so much it's truly a good deal
more convenient. And he's a real nice young fellow, and he plays the
piano finely, and he comes from up my way. And it seemed more neighborly
anyway. It's so large in the house at night, just now, and so creaky in
the garden.
With kindest regards, good-by for now, from RAE.
P.S.
Don't tell your guide or _any one!_ But Helene sent Zillah's mother a
check for fifteen hundred dollars. I saw it with my own eyes. And all
Zillah asked for that day was just a little blue serge suit. It seems
she'd promised her kid sister a little blue serge suit for July. And it
sort of worried her.
Helene sent the little blue serge suit too! And a hat! The hat had
bluebells on it. Do you think when you come home--if I haven't spent too
much money on wall-papers--that I could have a blue hat with bluebells
on it? Excuse me for bothering you--but you forgot to leave me enough
money.
* * * * *
It was some indefinite, pleasant time on Thursday, the twenty-fifth of
June, that the Senior Surgeon received this second letter.
It was Friday the twenty-sixth of June, exactly at dawn, that the Senior
Surgeon started homeward.
Nobody looks very well in the dawn. Certainly the Senior Surgeon didn't.
Heavily as a man wading through a bog of dreams, he stumbled out of his
cabin into the morning. Under his drowsy, brooding eyes appalling
shadows circled. Behind his sunburn,--deeper than his tan, something
sinister and uncanny lurked wanly like the pallor of a soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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