“Me!” I exploded—“A real writer lady! No more interviews with actresses! No more slushy Sunday specials! No more teary tales! Oh, my! When may I begin? To-morrow? You know I brought my typewriter with me. I’ve almost forgotten where the letters are on the keyboard.”
“Wait, wait; not so fast! In a month or two, perhaps. But first must come other things outdoor things. Also housework.”
“Housework!” I echoed, feebly.
“Naturlich. A little dusting, a little scrubbing, a little sweeping, a little cooking. The finest kind of indoor exercise. Later you may write a little—but very little. Run and play out of doors with the children. When I see you again you will have roses in your cheeks like the German girls, yes?”
“Yes,” I echoed, meekly, “I wonder how Frieda will like my elephantine efforts at assisting with the housework. If she gives notice, Norah will be lost to you.”
But Frieda did not give notice. After I had helped her clean the kitchen and the pantry I noticed an expression of deepest pity overspreading her lumpy features. The expression became almost one of agony as she watched me roll out some noodles for soup, and delve into the sticky mysteries of a new kind of cake.
Max says that for a poor working girl who hasn’t had time to cultivate the domestic graces, my cakes are a distinct triumph. Sis sniffs at that, and mutters something about cups of raisins and nuts and citron hiding a multitude of batter sins. She never allows the Spalpeens to eat my cakes, and on my baking days they are usually sent from the table howling. Norah declares, severely, that she is going to hide the Green Cook Book. The Green Cook Book is a German one. Norah bought it in deference to Max’s love of German cookery. It is called Aunt Julchen’s cook book, and the author, between hints as to flour and butter, gets delightfully chummy with her pupil. Her cakes are proud, rich cakes. She orders grandly:
“Now throw in the yolks of twelve eggs; one-fourth of a pound of almonds; two pounds of raisins; a pound of citron; a pound of orange-peel.”
As if that were not enough, there follow minor instructions as to trifles like ounces of walnut meats, pounds of confectioner’s sugar, and pints of very rich cream. When cold, to be frosted with an icing made up of more eggs, more nuts, more cream, more everything.
The children have appointed themselves official lickers and scrapers of the spoons and icing pans, also official guides on their auntie’s walks. They regard their Aunt Dawn as a quite ridiculous but altogether delightful old thing.
And Norah—bless her! looks up when I come in from a romp with the Spalpeens and says: “Your cheeks are pink! Actually! And you’re losing a puff there at the back of your ear, and your hat’s on crooked. Oh, you are beginning to look your old self, Dawn dear!”
At which doubtful compliment I retort, recklessly: “Pooh! What’s a puff more or less, in a worthy cause? And if you think my cheeks are pink now, just wait until your mighty Von Gerhard comes again. By that time they shall be so red and bursting that Frieda’s, on wash day, will look anemic by comparison. Say, Norah, how red are German red cheeks, anyway?”
CHAPTER III
GOOD AS NEW
So Spring danced away, and Summer sauntered in. My pillows looked less and less tempting. The wine of the northern air imparted a cocky assurance. One blue-and-gold day followed the other, and I spent hours together out of doors in the sunshine, lying full length on the warm, sweet ground, to the horror of the entire neighborhood. To be sure, I was sufficiently discreet to choose the lawn at the rear of the house. There I drank in the atmosphere, as per doctor’s instructions, while the genial sun warmed the watery blood in my veins and burned the skin off the end of my nose.
All my life I had envied the loungers in the parks— those silent, inert figures that lie under the trees all the long summer day, their shabby hats over their faces, their hands clasped above their heads, legs sprawled in uncouth comfort, while the sun dapples down between the leaves and, like a good fairy godmother, touches their frayed and wrinkled garments with flickering figures of golden splendor, while they sleep. They always seemed so blissfully care-free and at ease—those sprawling men figures—and I, to whom such simple joys were forbidden, being a woman, had envied them.
Now I was reveling in that very joy, stretched prone upon the ground, blinking sleepily up at the sun and the cobalt sky, feeling my very hair grow, and health returning in warm, electric waves. I even dared to cross one leg over the other and to swing the pendant member with nonchalant air, first taking a cautious survey of the neighboring back windows to see if any one peeked. Doubtless they did, behind those ruffled curtains, but I grew splendidly indifferent.
Even the crawling things—and there were myriads of them—added to the enjoyment of my ease. With my ear so close to the ground the grass seemed fairly to buzz with them. Everywhere there were crazily busy ants, and I, patently a sluggard and therefore one of those for whom the ancient warning was intended, considered them lazily. How they plunged about, weaving in and out, rushing here and there, helter-skelter, like bargain-hunting women darting wildly from counter to counter!
“O, foolish, foolish anties!” I chided them, “stop wearing yourselves out this way. Don’t you know that the game isn’t worth the candle, and that you’ll give yourselves nervous jim-jams and then you’ll have to go home to be patched up? Look at me! I’m a horrible example.”
But they only bustled on, heedless of my advice, and showed their contempt by crawling over me as I lay there like a lady Gulliver.
Oh, I played what they call a heavy thinking part. It was not only the ants that came in for lectures. I preached sternly to myself.
“Well, Dawn old girl, you’ve made a beautiful mess of it. A smashed-up wreck at twenty-eight! And what have you to show for it? Nothing! You’re a useless pulp, like a lemon that has been squeezed dry. Von Gerhard was right. There must be no more newspaper work for you, me girl. Not if you can keep away from the fascination of it, which I don’t think you can.”
Then I would fall to thinking of those years of newspapering—of the thrills of them, and the ills of them. It had been exhilarating, and educating, but scarcely remunerative. Mother had never approved. Dad had chuckled and said that it was a curse descended upon me from the terrible old Kitty O’Hara, the only old maid in the history of the O’Haras, and famed in her day for a caustic tongue and a venomed pen. Dad and Mother—what a pair of children they had been! The very dissimilarity of their natures had been a bond between them. Dad, light-hearted,
