“It will be $2.87 for an ounce bottle,” he said.
“Will you give me a piece of your wrapping cord?” said I.
I made a hole in the prescription, ran the cord through it, tied it
around my neck, and tucked it inside. All of us have a little
superstition, and mine runs to a confidence in amulets.
Of course there was nothing the matter with me, but I was very ill. I
couldn’t work, sleep, eat, or bowl. The only way I could get any
sympathy was to go without shaving for four days. Even then somebody
would say: “Old man, you look as hardy as a pine knot. Been up for a
jaunt in the Maine woods, eh?”
Then, suddenly, I remembered that I must have outdoor air and exercise.
So I went down South to John’s. John is an approximate relative by
verdict of a preacher standing with a little book in his hands in a
bower of chrysanthemums while a hundred thousand people looked on. John
has a country house seven miles from Pineville. It is at an altitude
and on the Blue Ridge Mountains in a state too dignified to be dragged
into this controversy. John is mica, which is more valuable and clearer
than gold.
He met me at Pineville, and we took the trolley car to his home. It is
a big, neighbourless cottage on a hill surrounded by a hundred
mountains. We got off at his little private station, where John’s
family and Amaryllis met and greeted us. Amaryllis looked at me a
trifle anxiously.
A rabbit came bounding across the hill between us and the house. I
threw down my suit-case and pursued it hotfoot. After I had run twenty
yards and seen it disappear, I sat down on the grass and wept
disconsolately.
“I can’t catch a rabbit any more,” I sobbed. “I’m of no further use in
the world. I may as well be dead.”
“Oh, what is it—what is it, Brother John?” I heard Amaryllis say.
“Nerves a little unstrung,” said John, in his calm way. “Don’t worry.
Get up, you rabbit-chaser, and come on to the house before the biscuits
get cold.” It was about twilight, and the mountains came up nobly to
Miss Murfree’s descriptions of them.
Soon after dinner I announced that I believed I could sleep for a year
or two, including legal holidays. So I was shown to a room as big and
cool as a flower garden, where there was a bed as broad as a lawn. Soon
afterward the remainder of the household retired, and then there fell
upon the land a silence.
I had not heard a silence before in years. It was absolute. I raised
myself on my elbow and listened to it. Sleep! I thought that if I only
could hear a star twinkle or a blade of grass sharpen itself I could
compose myself to rest. I thought once that I heard a sound like the
sail of a catboat flapping as it veered about in a breeze, but I
decided that it was probably only a tack in the carpet. Still I
listened.
Suddenly some belated little bird alighted upon the window-sill, and,
in what he no doubt considered sleepy tones, enunciated the noise
generally translated as “cheep!”