Part 30

So it ended in the doctor's and my dining tete-a-tete on a hastily improvised dinner,--it was then close upon eight, and our normal dinner hour is 6:30,--but it was such an improvised dinner as I am sure Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her invaluableness, did her absolutely Southern best. And after dinner we had coffee before the fire in my comfortable blue library, while the wind howled outside and the shutters banged.

We passed a most cordial and intimate evening. For the first time since our acquaintance I struck a new note in the man. There really is something attractive about him when you once come to know him. But the process of knowing him requires time and tact. He's no' very gleg at the uptak. I've never seen such a tantalizing inexplicable person. All the time I'm talking to him I feel as though behind his straight line of a mouth and his half-shut eyes there were banked fires smoldering inside. Are you sure he hasn't committed a crime? He does manage to convey the delicious feeling that he has.

And I must add that Sandy's not so bad a talker when he lets himself go. He has the entire volume of Scotch literature at his tongue's end.

"Little kens the auld wife as she sits by the fire what the wind is doing on Hurly-Burly-Swire," he observed as a specially fierce blast drove the rain against the window. That sounds pat, doesn't it? I haven't, though, the remotest idea what it means. And listen to this: between cups of coffee (he drinks far too much coffee for a sensible medical man) he casually let fall the news that his family knew the R. L. S. family personally, and used to take supper at 17 Heriot Row! I tended him assiduously for the rest of the evening in a Did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you? frame of mind.

When I started this letter, I had no intention of filling it with a description of the recently excavated charms of Robin MacRae; it's just by way of remorseful apology. He was so nice and companionable last night that I have been going about today feeling conscience-smitten at the thought of how mercilessly I made fun of him to you and Jervis. I really didn't mean quite all of the impolite things that I said. About once a month the man is sweet and tractable and engaging.

Punch has just been paying a social call, and during the course of it he lost three little toadlings an inch long. Sadie Kate recovered one of them from under the bookcase, but the other two hopped away; and I'm so afraid they've taken sanctuary in my bed! I do wish that mice and snakes and toads and angleworms were not so portable. You never know what is going on in a perfectly respectable-looking child's pocket.

I had a beautiful visit in Casa Pendleton. Don't forget your promise to return it soon.

Yours as ever,

SALLIE.

P.S. I left a pair of pale-blue bedroom slippers under the bed. Will you please have Mary wrap them up and mail them to me? And hold her hand while she writes the address. She spelt my name on the place cards "Mackbird."

Tuesday.

Dear Enemy:

As I told you, I left an application for an accomplished nurse with the employment bureau of New York.

Wanted! A nurse maid with an ample lap suitable for the accommodation of seventeen babies at once.

She came this afternoon, and this is the fine figure of a woman that I drew!

We couldn't keep a baby from sliding off her lap unless we fastened him firmly with safety pins.

Please give Sadie Kate the magazine. I'll read it tonight and return it tomorrow.

Was there ever a more docile and obedient pupil than

S. McBRIDE?

Thursday. My dear Judy:

I've been spending the last three days busily getting under way all those latest innovations that we planned in New York. Your word is law. A public cooky jar has been established.

Also, the eighty play boxes have been ordered. It is a wonderful idea, having a private box for each child, where he can store up his treasures. The ownership of a little personal property will help develop them into responsible citizens. I ought to have thought of it myself, but for some reason the idea didn't come. Poor Judy! You have inside knowledge of the longings of their little hearts that I shall never be able to achieve, not with all the sympathy I can muster.

We are doing our best to run this institution with as few discommoding rules as possible, but in regard to those play boxes there is one point on which I shall have to be firm. The children may not keep in them mice or toads or angleworms.

I can't tell you how pleased I am that Betsy's salary is to be raised, and that we are to keep her permanently. But the Hon. Cy Wykoff deprecates the step. He has been making inquiries, and he finds that her people are perfectly able to take care of her without any salary.

"You don't furnish legal advice for nothing," say I to him. "Why should she furnish her trained services for nothing?"

"This is charitable work."

"Then work which is undertaken for your own good should be paid, but work which is undertaken for the public good should not be paid?"

"Fiddlesticks!" says he. "She's a woman, and her family ought to support her."