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THE MADNESS OF AN HOUR
149

beautiful: and I shall look at its September loveliness and think, ‘This came out of my head!’

“I have taken another step in the Alpine Path. Last week the Ladies’ Own Journal accepted my poem, The Wind Woman, and gave me two subscriptions to the Journal for it. No cash—but that may come yet. I must make enough money before very long to pay Aunt Ruth every cent my living with her has cost her. Then she won’t be able to twit me with the expense I am to her. She hardly misses a day without some hint of it—‘No, Mrs. Beatty, I feel I can’t give quite as much to missions this year as usual—my expenses have been much heavier, you know’—‘Oh, no, Mr. Morrison, your new goods are beautiful but I can’t afford a silk dress this spring’—‘This davenport should really be upholstered again—it’s getting fearfully shabby—but it’s out of the question now for a year or two.’ So it goes.

“But my soul doesn’t belong to Aunt Ruth.

Owl’s Laughter was copied in the Shrewsbury Times—‘hunter’s moan’ and all. Evelyn Blake, I understand, says she doesn’t believe I wrote it at all—she’s sure she read something exactly like it somewhere some years ago.

“Dear Evelyn!

“Aunt Elizabeth said nothing at all about it, but Cousin Jimmy told me she cut it out and put it in the Bible she keeps on the stand by her bed. When I told her I was to get two dollars’ worth of seeds for it she said I’d likely find when I sent for them that the firm had gone bankrupt!

“I have a notion to send that little story about the child that Mr. Carpenter liked to Golden Hours. I wish I could get it typewritten, but that is impossible, so I shall have to write it very plainly. I wonder if I dare. They would surely pay for a story.

“Dean will soon be home. How glad I will be to see him! I wonder if he will think I have changed much. I have certainly grown taller. Aunt Laura says I will soon have to have really long dresses and put my hair