Part 27 (2/2)
”I should have eaten twice as much and recovered much more quickly if she had only let me know from whom they really came,” I interjected in an aggrieved tone.
”And tell how I wouldn't listen to that scoundrel till you should have a chance to justify yourself; how, the moment I had read your diary, I wrote and rejected him, and would not see him when he called; how he would not accept his dismissal, but followed me to the country; tell how dreadfully in the way he was that evening, till Mrs. Blodgett and Agnes and I trapped him into a game of whist”--
”You Machiavellis!”
”Tell all about my confession, and how we all spoiled you for those months at My Fancy. Oh, weren't they lovely, Donald?”
”I thought so then.”
”But not now?”
”A gooseberry is good till you taste a strawberry. There was a good deal too much gooseberry, as I remember.”
”Then tell how the papers and people chattered about your a.s.suming your true name; and how they gabbled when we were married,--and how, on our wedding day, we endowed the hospital ward”--
”Haven't you made a slip in the p.r.o.noun?”
”I'll box your ears if you even suggest it again; half of the money was what you earned--endowed the hospital ward in memory of _our_ dear father, and how happy we've been since.”
”You've made a mistake in the last p.r.o.noun, I'm certain.”
”You will write it to please me, Donald?”
”Oh, Maizie, I can't. It's all too dear to me.”
”Please, Don, try?”
”But”--
She interrupted my protest. ”Donald,” she said, the tenderness in her face and voice softening her words, ”before knowing that I loved you, you insisted that debt must be paid. Won't you pay me now, dear?”
”I don't merely owe you money, Maizie!” I cried. ”I owe you everything, and I'm a brute to the most generous of women. Give me the book, dear heart.”
”You'll make it nice, like the rest, won't you?” she begged.
”I'll try.” And then I laughingly added, ”Maizie, you still have the technical part of story-telling to learn.”
”How?”
”I can't write all you wish and make it symmetrical. In the first place, we don't want to spend so much time on Whitely as to give him a fict.i.tious value; and next, to be artistic, we must end with our good-night that evening.”
”Well, that will do, if you'll only tell it nicely.”
And that, my dears, is why I write again of those old days, so distant now in time and mood. What is told here is shared with you only to please my love, and I ask of you that it shall be a confidence. And of Another I beg that each of you in time may find a love as strong as that told here; that each may be as true and n.o.ble as your mother, and as happy as your father.
Good-night, my children. Good-night, my love. May G.o.d be as good to you as he has been to me.
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