One week; only one week to-day, this twenty-first of February.
I have been sitting here in the dark and thinking about it, till it
seems so horribly long and so horribly short; it has been such a week to
live through, and it is such a small part of the weeks that must be
lived through, that I could think no longer, but lighted my lamp and
opened my desk to find something to do.
I was tossing my paper about,--only my own: the packages in the yellow
envelopes I have not been quite brave enough to open yet,--when I came
across this poor little book in which I used to keep memoranda of the
weather, and my lovers, when I was a school-girl. I turned the leaves,
smiling to see how many blank pages were left, and took up my pen, and
now I am not smiling any more.
If it had not come exactly as it did, it seems to me as if I could bear
it better. They tell me that it should not have been such a shock.
“Your brother had been in the army so long that you should have been
prepared for anything. Everybody knows by what a hair a soldier’s life
is always hanging,” and a great deal more that I am afraid I have not
listened to. I suppose it is all true; but that never makes it any
easier.
The house feels like a prison. I walk up and down and wonder that I ever
called it home. Something is the matter with the sunsets; they come and
go, and I do not notice them. Something ails the voices of the children,
snowballing down the street; all the music has gone out of them, and
they hurt me like knives. The harmless, happy children!--and Roy loved
the little children.
Why, it seems to me as if the world were spinning around in the light
and wind and laughter, and God just stretched down His hand one morning
and put it out.
It was such a dear, pleasant world to be put out!
It was never dearer or more pleasant than it was on that morning. I had
not been as happy for weeks. I came up from the Post-Office singing to
myself. His letter was so bright and full of mischief! I had not had
one like it all the winter. I have laid it away by itself, filled with
his jokes and pet names, “Mamie” or “Queen Mamie” every other line, and
signed
“Until next time, your happy