I didn't see Whythe for the next few days, as I thought it best not to,
and, besides, I had bushels of letters to write and a very special one
to Father, and I had no time for him. The thing I had to write Father
about was money. I wanted five hundred dollars, and the only way I
knew how to get it was to ask him to give it to me; so I asked. I
always did believe that the person who gives the money ought to be told
what is to be done with it, and that is why I wrote Father as I did;
and, besides, he likes to hear little bits of news about the
Twickenham-Towners, and asking for the money gave me a chance to tell
him.
He had told me, when he was here, that if there was any way in which I
could be of service in the right way to let him know and he would put
up the money part, if I would manage the other part, and it would be a
little secret between us and nobody else need know anything about it.
When, last week, I heard Mrs. Richard Stafford say she would rather go
to a hospital for a month than do anything on earth, I thought my
chance had come. At the hospital, she said, a person had the right to
be waited on and do nothing, and not think about food or servants, and
not feel they were bothering other people by being sick; and while she
wasn't sick exactly, a hospital would seem like heaven if she could be
in one for a little while. She had laughed when she said it, and
didn't dream of its being taken in earnest, but I took it in earnest,
for the tiredness in her face makes me ache every time I see her, and
right up in my mind popped the little secret Father and I and Miss Polk
could have. What I wrote was this:
_Father dear, will you please send me five hundred dollars, and if you
can do it by return mail I will be very much obliged. The person I
want part of it for is so tired that she might not be able to ever get
rested unless she has a chance pretty quick to lie down and do nothing
for a month, anyhow, and that is why I am in a hurry. Tiredness is a
very wearing disease and if it runs on too long it runs a person into a
state that is almost impossible to get out of, and the whole family has
to pay up for letting it go on. Home gets hell-y when there's too much
tiredness in it. What I want the money for is this: Mrs. Stafford is
worn out. You know her. She was Miss Mary Shirley, and married a
perfectly useless man when she was eighteen, and she is now the mother
of seven children, and has a mother-in-law living with her, and also
Miss Lou Barbee, who won't go away. And, of course, the man whom she
can't turn out. He isn't bad. Just lazy, with nothing to him, but she
loves him and I will skip over that part. She needs a rest and ought
to have it. It's nothing but scrimp and scrape and strive to keep up
appearances day in and day out, year in and year out, until she is all
to pieces and the children don't realize what is the matter. And, of
course, the Male Person doesn't, for he says that Woman's Place is in
the Home. When he told me that yesterday (his heels were on the
railing of his porch, where he generally keeps them, and his pipe in
his mouth) I thought to myself that if he were mine he would have to
get out of my home or prove he had a better right to share it with me
than he had ever proved to his wife. But I won't get on that, either.
I'll go back to Mrs. Stafford._
_Half the time she doesn't have a servant, and all the time she has a
mother-in-law, who is pie crust, and Miss Lou Barbee, who's a bagpipe,
and with the doors locked and windows shut so no one can see, she has
worked herself to death. What I want done is to have an invitation
sent her from an old friend to be the guest of the hospital here for a
month, and you will be the friend and she will never know it. Miss
Polk, the superintendent of the hospital, will manage things. I've
talked it over with her, and she understands. Miss Polk is a perfectly
grand person. For Simon-pure sense there isn't her equal on earth.
She and I have decided on what we would do if we had money. We'd have
a Fund for Tired Mothers and Fathers. It would be used to give them a
Rest before Death._
_I hope you won't mind sending the money. I don't think you will, for
everybody says business is so prosperous it's actually unrighteous, and
it's in the Bible that you ought to put your treasures where you can
find them again, or something like that. If you can't send it I know
there will be a good reason for your not sending it, but I would like
to have it by Monday if possible, so Mrs. Stafford can go to the
Hospital the next day. Later, four other people can have their turn.
It is to be used not for illness, but for Tiredness; for broken-downers
and worn-outers who need being waited on and fed up and allowed to keep
still. Miss Polk and I are going to decide on who needs a rest the
most before I go away, and I send you for it, Father dear, an armful of
squeezes and the biggest bunch of kisses the mail-man can take._
That was all I told him about the Rest money, but I said a little
something about the picnic I thought I ought to give. Everybody in
town has given something, and, having accepted, I have to return, and
the picnic will be the best thing for Whythe and Elizabeth. I didn't
mention the ex-lovers to Father, of course. Even to a father one
doesn't have to tell everything in life.