T she
was realy repeating lists, such as sowing basket, table candles,
headache tablets, black silk stockings and tennis rackets.
Sis got some lovely Clothes, mostly imported, but they had a woman
come in and sow for me. Hannah and she used to interupt my most
precious Moments at my desk by running a tape measure around me, or
pinning a paper pattern to me. The sowing woman always had her
mouth full of Pins, and once, owing to my remarking that I wished
I had been illagitimate, so I could go away and live my own life,
she swallowed one. It caused a grate deal of excitement, with
Hannah blaming me and giving her vinigar to swallow to soften the
pin. Well, it turned out all right, for she kept on living, but she
pretended to have sharp pains all over her here and there, and if
the pin had been as lively as a tadpole and wriggled from spot to
spot, it could not have hurt in so many Places.
Of course they blamed me, and I shut myself up more and more in my
Sanctuery. There I lived with the creatures of my dreams, and
forgot for a while that I was only a Sub-Deb, and that Leila's last
year's tennis clothes were being fixed over for me.
But how true what dear Shakspeare says:
dreams,
Which are the ren of an idle brain.
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
I loved my dreams, but alas, they were not enough. After a tortured
hour or two at my desk, living in myself the agonies of my
characters, suffering the pangs of the wife with two husbands and
both living, struggling in the water with the ren, fruit of
the first union, dying with number two and blowing my last Bubbles
heavenward--after all these emotions, I was done out.
Jane came in one day and found me prostrate on my couch, with a
light of sufering in my eyes.
"Dearest!" cried Jane, and gliding to my side, fell on her knees.