I carried my machine home. Machines are heavy things. A sort of rainy
snow was falling, and though it was only four in the afternoon, it was
beginning to grow dark. The streets were in a bad state with slush and
mud and ice, and I got very wet on my way to the car, for I couldn't
put up an umbrella, as I had to carry my machine under one arm and my
manuscript under the other.
As soon as I walked into our house, Margaret called out from the
dining-room:
"Mr. Hamilton is here." Then he got up--he was having tea with
them--and came over to me. I had the type-writer in my hand, and I
don't know whether I dropped it or set it down on the floor.
I hadn't had any luncheon, I was soaked through. I had worked for weeks
on my novel, and, besides the office work, I had type-written that
long play. I had been working day and night, and I had been insulted
and discharged. I was tired out, cold, and wet. Add to this the sudden
shock of seeing Mr. Hamilton, and you will understand why even a
healthy girl of eighteen may sometimes faint.
It was only a little faint, and I came to while Roger was carrying me
up-stairs; but I did not move, for his face was against mine.
Mama had come up with us, and when Roger set me on the couch, she
said she'd take charge of me. She told him to go down-stairs and have
Margaret make me a toddy, and to bring it up on a tray with my dinner.
I felt like a big baby to have her fussing over me and taking off all
my wet things. I had a lovely pink eider-down dressing-gown that she
had made me, and she forced me to get into that and into dry stockings
and slippers.
By this time Roger and Margaret came up with the tray, and all three
were doing things for me. Roger himself mixed me a drink. It was hot,
with brandy and lemon in it. As soon as I drank it, it went right to my
head, for I had eaten nothing since morning, and I tried to tell them
about Mrs. Martin's discharging me, and how that author had not paid me
for all my work.
Cloudy as my head was and stumblingly as I talked, I won their
sympathies. Roger said that the author was a mean little sneak, a
cursed small cur, and that he'd like to kick him all over the town.
Then, because I started to cry, they tried to make me eat something and
drink some coffee; but I was so sleepy I could not keep my eyes open.
The first thing I knew, I was in my bed.
I slept and slept; I slept till ten o'clock the next day. The first
thought I had was that Roger must have gone. I never dressed so
quickly, and I ran to his room and knocked; but he was not there.
Margaret also had departed for work, but I found mama in the kitchen.
She was making me an oyster stew, a thing for which I had acquired a
liking. As soon as I appeared, she cried:
"You bad girl, what did you get up for? Here's a note for you."
With hands trembling with excitement, I read Roger's first letter to
me. It was like him, those two brief, laconic sentences:
Back by noon. Stay in bed.