 Chapter 1 of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed. There are a number of things that are pleasenture than being sick in a New York boarding-house when one's nearest dearest is a married sister up in faraway Michigan. Someone must have been very kind, for there were doctors and a blue and white striped nurse and bottles and things. There was even a vase of perky carnations, scarlet ones. I discovered that they had a trick of knotting their heads, saucily. The discovery did not appear to surprise me. How do you do? said I, aloud to the fattest and reddest carnation that overtopped all the rest. How in the world did you get in here? The striped nurse, I hadn't noticed her before, rose from some corner and came swiftly over to my bedside, taking my wrist between her fingers. I'm very well, thank you, she said, smiling, and I came in at the door, of course. I wasn't talking to you, I snapped crossly. I was speaking to the carnations, particularly to that elderly one at the top, the fat one who keeps bowing and wagging his head at me. Oh, yes, answered the striped nurse politely, of course. That one is very lively, isn't he? But suppose we take them out for a little while now. She picked up the vase and carried it into the corridor, and the carnations knotted their heads more vigorously than ever over her shoulder. I heard her call softly to someone. The someone answered with a sharp little cry that sounded like, conscious. The next moment my own sister Nora came quietly into the room, and knelt at the side of my bed and took me in her arms. It did not seem at all surprising that she should be there, patting me with reassuring little love-pats, murmuring over me with her lips against my cheek, calling me a hundred half-forgotten pet names that I had not heard for years. But then nothing seemed to surprise me that surprising day. Not even the sight of a great red-haired, red-faced, scrubbed-looking man who strolled into the room just as Nora was in the midst of denouncing newspapers in general, and my newspaper in particular, and calling the city editor a slave driver and a beast. The big red-haired man stood regarding us tolerantly. "'Better, eh?' said he, not as one who asks a question, but as though in confirmation of a thought. Then he too took my wrist between his fingers. His touch was very firm and cool. After that he pulled down my eyelids and said, hmm. Then he patted my cheek smartly once or twice. "'You'll do,' he pronounced. He picked up a sheet of paper from the table and looked it over, keen-eyed. There followed a clinking of bottles and glasses, a few low-spoken words to the nurse. And then, as she left the room, the big red-haired man seated himself heavily in the chair near the bedside, and rested his great hands on his fat knees. He stared down at me in much the same way that a huge mastiff looks at a terrier. Finally his glance rested on my limp left hand. "'Married, hmm?' For a moment the word would not come. I could hear Nora catch her breath quickly. Then "'Yes,' answered I. "'Husband living?' I could see suspicion donning in his cold gray eye. Again the catch in Nora's throat and a little half warning, half supplicating gesture, and again "'Yes,' said I. The dawn of suspicion burst into full glow. "'Where is he?' growled the red-haired doctor, at a time like this. I shut my eyes for a moment, too sick at heart to resent his manner. I could feel more than see that Cis was signaling him frantically. I moistened my lips and answered him bitterly. He is in the stark-weather hospital for the insane. When the red-haired man spoke again the growl was quite gone from his voice. "'And your home is where?' "'Nowhere,' I replied meekly from my pillow. But at that Cis put her hand out quickly, as though she had been struck and said, "'My home is her home.' "'Well, then take her there,' he ordered, frowning, "'and keep her there as long as you can,' newspaper reporting. "'Hm? In New York? That's the devil of a job for a woman, "'and a husband who—well, you'll have to take a six-month course in loafing, young woman. "'And at the end of that time, if you are still determined to work, "'can't you pick out something easier, like taking and scrubbing, for instance?' "'I managed a feeble smile, wishing that he would go away quickly so that I might sleep. "'He seemed to divine my thoughts, for he disappeared into the corridor, "'taking Nora with him. Their voices, low-pitched and carefully guarded, "'could be heard as they conversed outside my door. "'Nora was telling him the whole miserable business. "'I wished savagely that she would let me tell it, if it must be told. "'How could she paint the fascination of the man who was my husband? "'She had never known the charm of him as I had known it in those few brief months before our marriage. "'She had never felt the caress of his voice, or the magnetism of his strange, smoldering eyes, "'glowing across the smoke-dim city room as I had felt them fixed on me. "'No one had ever known what he had meant to the girl of twenty, "'with her brain full of unspoken dreams—dreams which were all to become glorious realities "'in that wonder-place, New York. "'How he had fired my country girl imagination. "'He had been the most brilliant rider on the big, brilliant sheet, "'and the most dissolute. "'How my heart had pounded on that first lonely day when this wonder-being looked up from his desk "'saw me and strolled over to where I sat before my typewriter. "'He smiled down at me, companionably. "'I'm quite sure that my mouth must have been wide open with surprise. "'He had been smoking a cigarette, an expensive-looking gold-tipped one. "'Now he removed it from between his lips with that hand that always shook a little "'and dropped it to the floor, crushing it lightly with the toe of his boot. "'He threw back his handsome head and sent out the last mouthful of smoke in a thin, lazy spiral. "'I remember thinking what a pity it was that he should have crushed that costly-looking cigarette, just for me.' "'My name's Orm,' he said gravely. "'Peter Orm. "'And if yours isn't Shaughnessy or Burke at least, then I'm no judge of what black hair and gray eyes stand for.' "'Then you're not,' retorted I, laughing up at him, for it happens to be O'Hara. "'Don, O'Hara, if you please.' "'He picked up a trifle that lay on my desk, a pencil, perhaps, or a bit of paper, and toyed with it, "'absently, as though I had not spoken. "'I thought he had not heard, and I was conscious of feeling a bit embarrassed and very young. "'Suddenly he raised his smoldering eyes to mine, and I saw that they had taken on a deeper glow. "'His white, even teeth showed and a half smile.' "'Don, O'Hara,' said he, slowly, and the name had never sounded in the least like music before. "'Don, O'Hara, it sounds like a rose, a pink blush rose that is deeper pink at its heart, and very sweet.' "'He picked up the trifle with which he had been toying and eyed it intently for a moment, "'as though his whole mind were absorbed by the light of his eyes. "'He picked up the trifle with which he had been toying and eyed it intently for a moment, "'as though his whole mind were absorbed in it. "'Then he put it down, turned, and walked slowly away. "'I sat staring after him like a little simpleton, puzzled, bewildered, stunned. "'That had been the beginning of it all. "'He had what we Irish call, away with him. "'I wonder now why I did not go mad with the joy and the pain and the uncertainty of it all. "'Never was a girl so dazzled, so humbled, so worshipped, so neglected, so courted. "'He was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. "'What guys would he wear today? Would he be gay or dour or sullen, "'or teasing or passionate, or cold or tender or scintillating? "'I know that my hands are always cold and my cheeks were always hot those days.' "'He wrote like a modern demosthenes, "'with all political New York to quiver under his filipics. "'The managing editor used to send him out on wonderful assignments, "'and they used to hold the paper for his stuff when it was late. "'Sometimes he would be gone for days at a time, "'and when he returned the men would look at him with a sort of admiring awe. "'And the city editor would glance up from beneath his green eye-shade and call out, "'Say, Orm, for a man who has just wired in about a million dollars worth of stuff "'seems to me you don't look very crisp and jaunty.' "'Haven't slept for a week,' Peter Orm would growl, "'and then he would brush past the men who were crowded around him "'and turn in my direction, and the old hot and cold, "'happy, frightened, laughing, sobbing sensation "'would have me by the throat again.' "'Well, we were married. Love cast a glamour over his very vices, "'his love of drink, a weakness which I would transform into strength, "'his white hot flashes of uncontrollable temper. "'Surely they would die down at my cool, tender touch. "'His fits of abstraction and irritability, "'mere evidences of the genius within. "'Oh, my worshiping soul was always alert with an excuse. "'And so we were married. He had quite tired of me in less than a year, "'and the hand that had always shaken a little shook a great deal now, "'and the fits of abstraction and temper could be counted upon "'to appear offener than any other moods. "'I used to laugh sometimes when I was alone at the bitter humor of it all. "'It was like a Duchess novel, come to life.' "'His work began to show slip-shot in spots. "'They talked to him about it, and he laughed at them. "'Then one day he left them in the ditch on the big story of the "'McManus indictment, and the whole town scooped him, "'and the managing editor told him that he must go. "'His lapses had become too frequent. "'They would have to replace him with a man not so brilliant, "'perhaps, but more reliable. "'I dare not think of his face as it looked when he came home to "'the little apartment and told me. "'The smoldering eyes were flaming now. "'His lips reflect with a sort of foam. "'I stared at him in horror. "'He strode over to me, clasped his fingers about my throat, "'and shook me as a dog shakes a mouse. "'Why don't you cry, eh?' he snarled. "'Why don't you cry?' "'And then I did cry out at what I saw in his eyes. "'I wrenched myself free, fled to my room, and locked the door, "'and stood against it with my hand pressed over my heart, "'until I heard the outer door slam and the echo of his footsteps "'die away. "'Divorce, that was my only salvation. "'No, that would be cowardly now. "'I would wait until he was on his feet again, "'and then I would demand my old free life back once more. "'This existence that was dragging me into the gutter, "'this was not life. "'Life was a glorious, beautiful thing, and I would have it yet. "'I laid my plans, feverishly, and waited. "'He did not come back that night, or the next, "'or the next, or the next. "'And desperation I went to see the men at the office. "'No, they had not seen him. "'Was there anything that they could do?' they asked. "'I smiled and thanked them and said, "'Oh, Peter was so absent-minded. "'No doubt he had misdirected his letters, "'or something of the sort. "'And then I went back to the flat "'to resume the horrible waiting. "'One week later he turned up at the old office, "'which had cast him off. "'He sat down on his former desk and began to write, "'breathlessly, as he used to in the days "'when all the big stories fell to him. "'One of the men reporters strolled up to him "'and touched him on the shoulder, man-fashioned. "'Peter Orm raised his head and stared at him, "'and the man sprang back in terror. "'The smoldering eyes had burned down to an ash. "'Peter Orm was quite bereft of all reason. "'They took him away that night, "'and I kept telling myself that it wasn't true, "'that it was all anasty dream, "'and I would wake up pretty soon and laugh about it "'and tell it at the breakfast table.' "'Well, one does not seek a divorce "'from a husband who is insane. "'The busy men on the great paper were very kind. "'They would take me back on the staff. "'That I think that I could still write "'those amusing little human-interest stories? "'Funny ones, you know, with a punch in them.' "'Oh, plenty of good stories left in me yet, "'I assured them. "'They must remember that I was only twenty-one after all, "'and at twenty-one one does not lose the sense of humor.' "'And so I went back to my old desk "'and wrote bright, chatty letters home to Nora "'and ground out very funny stories with a punch in them "'that the husband in the insane asylum "'might be kept in comforts. "'With both hands I hung on like grim death "'to that saving sense of humor, "'resolved to make something of that miserable mess "'which was my life, to make something of it yet. "'And now, at this point in my musings, "'there was an end of the low-voiced conversation in the hall. "'Sis tipped Oden and looked to disapproval "'at finding me sleepless. "'Don, old girly, this will never do. "'Shut your eyes now like a good child and go to sleep. "'Guess what that great brute of a doctor said. "'I may take you home with me next week. "'Don, dear, you will come, won't you? "'You must. This is killing you. "'Don't make me go away leaving you here. "'I couldn't stand it. "'She leaned over my pillow and closed my eyelids "'gently with her sweet, cool fingers. "'You are coming home with me, "'and you shall sleep and eat and sleep and eat, "'until you are as lively as the widow Malone, "'a home, and twice as fat. "'Home, Donnie, dear, where we'll forget all about New York. "'Home with me.' "'I reached up, uncertainly, "'and brought her hand down to my lips "'and a great piece to send it upon my sick soul. "'Home with you,' I said, like a child and fell asleep." End of chapter 1. Chapter 2 Of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett. Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Furber Chapter 2 Mostly Eggs Oh, but it was clean and sweet and wonderfully still, that rose and white room at Nora's. No streetcars to tear at one's nerves with grinding breaks and clanging bells. No tramping of restless speed on the concrete, all through the long noisy hours. No shrieking midnight joyriders. Not one of the hundred sounds which make night hideous in the city. What bliss to lie there, hour after hour, and a delicious, half-waking, half-sleeping, wholly exquisite stupor, only rousing myself to swallow eggnog number 426 and then to flop back again on the big cool pillow. New York with its lights, its clanger, its millions, was only a faraway jumbled nightmare. The office with its clacking typewriters, its insistent nerve-wracking telephone bells, its systematic rush, its smoke-dim city room, was but an ugly part of the dream. Back to that inferno of haste and scramble and clatter? Never, never, I resolved drowsily, and dropped off to sleep again. And the sheets, oh, those sheets of Nora's, why they were white instead of gray, and they actually smelled of flowers. For that matter there were rose buds on the silken coverlet. It took me a week to get chummy with that rosebud and down quilt. I had to explain carefully to Nora that after a half-dozen years of sleeping under doubtful boarding-house blankets, one does not so soon get rid of a shuddering disgust for coverings which are haunted by the ghosts of a hundred unknown sleepers. Those years had taught me to draw up the sheet with scrupulous care, to turn it down and smooth it over, so that no contaminating and woolly blanket should touch my skin. The habit stuck even after Nora had tucked me in between her fragrant sheets. Automatically my hands groped about, arranging the old protecting barrier. What's the matter, fuss-fuss, inquired Nora, looking on? That down quilt won't bite you, what an old maid you are. Don't like blankets next to my face, I elucidated sleepily. Never can tell who slept under them last. You cat, exclaimed Nora, making a little rush at me. If you weren't supposed to be ill I'd shake you, comparing my darling rosebud quilt to your miserable gray blankets. Just for that I'll make you eat an extra pair of eggs. There never was a sister like Nora, but then who ever heard of a brother-in-law like Max. No woman, not even a frazzled-out newspaper woman, could receive the love and care that they gave me and fail to flourish under it. They had been dad and mother to me since the day when Nora had tucked me under her arm and carried me away from New York. Sis was an angel, a comforting twentieth-century angel with white apron strings for wings, and a tempting tray in her hands in place of the hymn-books and palm leaves that the picture-book angels carry. She cokes the inevitable eggs and beef into more tempting forms than Mrs. Rohrer ever guessed at. She could disguise those two plain, nourishing articles of diet so affectionately that neither hen nor cow would have suspected either of having once been part of her anatomy. Once I ate halfway through a melting, fluffy, peach-pedeck plate of something before I discovered that it was only another egg in the skies. Feel like eating a great big dinner today, kidlet? Nora would ask in the morning as she stood at my bedside with a glass of egg-something in her hand, of course. Eat, horror and disgust shuddering through my voice. Don't speak of it to me, and for pity's sake tell Frida to shut the kitchen door when you go down, will you? I can smell something like pot roast with gravy, and I would turn my face to the wall. Three hours later I would hear cysts coming softly up the stairs, accompanied by a tinkling of china and glass. I would face her, all protest. Didn't I tell you, cysts, that I couldn't eat a mouthful, not a mouthful— How perfectly scrumptious that looks! What's that affair in the lettuce-leaf? Oh, can't I begin on that divine-looking pinky stuff in the tall glass? Oh, please. I thought Nora would begin, and then she would snicker softly. Oh, well, that was hours ago I would explain loftily. Perhaps I could manage a bite or two now. Whereupon I would demolish everything except the china and doilies. It was at this point on the road to recovery, just half way between illness and health, that Nora and Max brought the great and unsmiling von Gerhardt on the scene. It appeared that even New York was respectfully aware of von Gerhardt, the nerve specialist, in spite of the fact that he lived in Milwaukee. The idea of bringing him up to look at me occurred to Max quite suddenly. I think it was on the evening that I burst into tears when Max entered the room wearing a squeaky shoe. The weeping walrus was a self-contained and tranquil creature compared to me at that time. The sight of a fly on the wall was enough to make me burst into a passion of sobs. I know the boy to steady those shaky nerves of yours, Don, said Max, after I had made a shame-faced apology from my hysterical weeping. I'm going to have von Gerhardt up here to look at you. He can run up Sunday, eh, Nora? Who's von Gerhardt I inquired out of the depths of my ignorance? Anyway, I won't have him. I'll bet he wears a van dyke and spectacles. Von Gerhardt exclaimed Nora indignantly. You ought to be thankful to have him look at you, even if he wears goggles and a flowing beard. Why, even that red-haired New York doctor of yours cringed and looked impressed when I told him that von Gerhardt was a friend of my husband's, and that they had been comrades at Heidelberg. I must have mentioned him dozens of times in my letters. Never. Queer commented Max. He runs up here every now and then to spend a quiet Sunday with Nora and me and the Svalpeans. Says it rests him. The kids swarm all over him and tear him limb from limb. It doesn't look restful, but he says it's great. I think he came here from Berlin just after you left for New York, Don. He'll walk he fits him as if it had been made for him. But you're not going to drag this wonderful being up here just for me, I protested aghast. Max pointed an accusing finger at me from the doorway. Aren't you with the bromides call a bundle of nerves? And isn't von Gerhardt's specialty untying just those knots? I'll write to him tonight. And he did, and von Gerhardt came. The Svalpeans watched for him, their noses flattened against the window-pane, for it was raining. As he came up the path, they burst out of the door to meet him. From my bedroom window I saw him come prancing up the walk like a boy, with the two children clinging to his coattails, all three quite unmindful of the rain and yelling like Comanches. Ten minutes later he had donned his professional dignity, entered my room and beheld me in all my limp and pea-green beauty. I noted approvingly that he had to stoop a bit as he entered the low doorway and that the van dyke of my prophecy was missing. He took my hand in his own steady, reassuring clasp. Then he began to talk. Half an hour sped away while we discussed New York, books, music theaters, everything and anything but Don O'Hara. I learned later that as we chatted he was getting his story bit by bit from every twitch of the eyelids, from every gesture of the hands that had grown too thin to wear the hateful ring, from every motion of the lips, from the color of my nails, from each convulsive muscle, from every shadow and wrinkle and curve in line of my face. Suddenly he asked, Are you making the proper effort to get well? You try to conquer those jumping nerfs, yes? I glared at him. Try. I do everything. I eat woolly worms if I thought they might benefit me. If every girl has minded her big sister and her doctor, that girl is I. I've eaten everything from pâté de foie gras to raw beef and I've drunk everything from blood to champagne. Eggs, queried von Gerhard as though making a happy suggestion. Eggs, I snorted. Eggs, thousands of them. Eggs hard and soft boiled, poached and fried, scrambled and sheared. Eggs and beer and eggnogs. Egg lemonade and egg orange aids. Eggs and wine and eggs and milk and eggs on naturel. I flapped up iron and wine and whole rivers of milk and I've devoured rare porterhouse and roast beef day after day for weeks. So, eggs. Mine himmel, ejaculated he, fervently, and you still live. A suspicion of a smile dawned in his eyes. I wonder if you ever laughed. I would experiment. Don't breathe it to a soul, I whispered tragically, but eggs and eggs alone are turning my love for my sister into bitterest hate. She stalks me the whole day long, forcing egg mixtures down my unwilling throat. She bullies me. I dare not put out my hand suddenly without knocking over liquid refreshment to some form, but certainly with an egg lurking in its depths. I am so expert that I can tell an egg orange aid from an egg lemonade at a distance of twenty yards, with my left hand tied behind me and one eye shut, and my feet in a sack. You can laugh, eh? Well, that is good, commented the grave an unsmiling one. Sure, answered I, made more flippant by his solemnity. Surely I can laugh, for what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense of humor was like a chileli, an illigent thing to have around handy, especially when the joke's on you. The ghost of a twinkle appeared again in the corners of the German blue eyes. Some fiend of rudeness seized me. Laugh, I commanded. Dr. Ernst von Gerhard stiffened. Pardon, inquired he, as one who was sure that he is misunderstood. Laugh, I snapped again. I'll dare you to do it. I'll double dare you. You dastard. But he did. After a moment's bewildered surprise, he threw back his handsome blond head and gave vent to a great, deep, infectious roar of mirth that brought the spalpenes tumbling up the stairs in defiance of their mother's strict instructions. After that we got along beautifully. He turned out to be quite human beneath the outer crust of reserve. He continued his examination only after bribing the spalpenes shamefully, so that even their rapacious demands were satisfied, and they trotted off contentedly. There followed a process which reduced me to a giggling heap of which von Gerhard carried out ceremoniously. It consisted of certain wraps at my knees and shins and elbows and fingers and certain commands to look at my finger, look at the wall, look at my finger, look at the wall. So, said von Gerhard at last, in a ton of finality, I sank my battered frame into the nearest chair. This, this newspaper work, it must cease. He dismissed it with a wave of the hand. Certainly, I said with elaborate sarcasm, how should you advise me to earn my living in the future? In the stories they paint dinner cards, don't they, or bake angel cakes? Are you then never serious, asked von Gerhard in disapproval? Never, said I. An old, worn-out, worked-out newspaper reporter with a husband in the madhouse can't afford to be serious for a minute, because if she were she'd go mad, too, with the hopelessness of it all. And I buried my face in my hands. The room was very still for a moment, then the great von Gerhard came over and took my hands gently from my face. I, I do beg your pardon, he said. He looked strangely boyish and uncomfortable as he said it. I was thinking only of your good. We do that sometimes, forgetting that circumstances may make our wishes impossible of execution. So, you will forgive me? Forgive you? Yes, indeed, I assured him. And we shook hands, gravely. But that doesn't help matters much after all, does it? Yes, it helps. For now we understand what another is it not so. You say you can only write for a living, then why not write here at home? Surely these years of newspaper work have given you a great knowledge of human nature. Then, too, there is your gift of humor. Surely that is a combination which should make your work acceptable to the magazines. Never in my life have I seen so many magazines as here in the United States, but hundreds, thousands. 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? Tomorrow? You know, I brought my typewriter with me. I've almost forgotten where the letters are on the keyboard. Wait, wait, not so fast. And a month or two perhaps. But first must come other things. Outdoor things. Also housework. Housework, I echoed feebly. Naturally. 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 Frida will like my elephantine efforts at assisting with the housework. If she gives notice, Nora will be lost to you. But Frida 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 badder sins. She never allows the spalpenes to eat my cakes, and on my baking days they were usually sent from the table howling. Nora declares severely that she is going to hide the green cookbook. The green cookbook is a German one. Nora bought it in deference to Max's love of German cookery. It is called Aunt Jolton's cookbook, 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 walnuts, 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 liquors and scrapers of the spoons and icing pans, also official guides on their auntie's walks. They regard their Aunt Don as a quite ridiculous but altogether delightful old thing. And Nora, bless her, looks up when I come in from a romp with his palpines and says, Your cheeks are pink, actually, and you're losing a puff there at the back of your ear and your hat's uncrooked. Oh, you are beginning to look your old self, Don dear. At which doubtful compliment I retort recklessly. Poo, what's a puff more or less on 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 Frida's on wash day will look anemic by comparison. Say, Nora, how red are German red cheeks, anyway? End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber Chapter 3 Good Is 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 and hurt 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 dappled down between the leaves and like a good fairy godmother touches their frayed and wrinkled garments with flickering figures of gold and splendor while they sleep. They always seemed so blissfully carefree 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 in 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 anyone peaked. Doubtless they did behind those ruffled curtains, but I glues splendidly indifferent. Even the crawling things, and there were myriads of them, added to the enjoyment of my ease. With my ears 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. Oh, foolish, foolish aunties, 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 gem-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, Don, 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 to send that upon me from the terrible old Kitty O'Hara, the only old maiden in the history of the O'Hara's, and famed in her day for a caustic tongue and a venom to 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, whimsical, carefree, and provident. Mother, gravely sweet, anxious-browed, trying to teach economy to the handsome Irish husband who, descendant of a long and royal line of spin-thrift ancestors, would have none of it. It was Dad who had insisted that they named me Don, Don O'Hara. His sense of humor must have been sleeping. You were such a rosy, pinky, soft baby thing, Mother had once told me, that you looked just like the first flush of light at sunrise. That is why your father insisted on calling you Don. Poor Dad, how could he know that at twenty-eight I would be a yellow wreck of a newspaper reporter with a wrinkle between my eyes. If he could see me now, he would say, Sure, you look like the Don yet, me girl, but a Pittsburgh Don. At that, Mother, if she were here, would pat my cheek where the hollow place is in murmur. Never mind, Donny Deary, Mother thinks you are beautiful just the same. Of such blessed stuff are Mother's made. At this stage of the memory game I would bury my face in the warm grass and thank my God for having taken Mother before Peter-Orm came into my life. And then I would fall asleep there on the soft, sweet grass with my head snuggled in my arms and the ants wriggling, unchided into my ears. On the last of these sylvan occasions I awoke, not with a graceful start, like the storybook ladies, but with a grunt. Sis was digging me in the ribs with her toe. I looked up to see her standing over me, a foaming tumbler of something in her hand. I felt that it was eggy and eyed it disgustedly. Get up, said she, you lazy scribbler, and drink this. I sat up, eyeing her severely and picking grass and ants out of my hair. Do you mean to tell me that you woke me out of that babe-like slumber to make me drink that goo? What is it, anyway? I'll bet it's another eggnog. Eggnog it is, and swallow it right away, because there are guests to see you. I emerged from the first dip into the yellow mixture and fixed on her a stern and terrible look as anyone can whose mouth is encircled by a moustache of yellow foam. Guess, I roared. Not from me. Don't you dare to say that they came to see me. Did too, insist Nora with firmness, they came especially to see you, asked for you, right from the jump. I finished the eggnog and four gulps, returned the empty tumbler with an air of decision and sank upon the grass. Tell them I rave, tell them that I'm unconscious and that for weeks I've recognized no one, not even my dear sister. Say that in my present nerve-shatter condition I… That wouldn't satisfy them, Nora calmly interrupts. They know you're crazy because they saw you out here from their second story back windows. That's why they came. So you may as well get up and face them. I promise them I'd bring you in. You can't go on forever refusing to see people, and you know the Waylands are… Waylands, I gasped. How many of them? Not the entire fiendish three. All three, I left them champing within patience. The Waylands live just around the corner. The Waylands are omniscient. They have a system of news gathering which would make the efforts of a New York daily appear antiquated. They know that Jenny Lafen feeds the family on soup, meat and oatmeal when Mr. Lafen is on the road. They know that Mrs. Pearson only shakes out her rugs once in four weeks. They can tell you the number of times a week that Sam Dempster comes home drunk. They know that the Merkels never have cream with their coffee because little Lizzie Merkel goes to the creamery every day with just one pail and three cents. They gloat over the knowledge that Professor Grimes, who is a married man, is sweet on Gordy Ash, who teaches second reader in his school. They can tell you where Mrs. Black got her seal coat and her husband only earning two thousand a year. They know who is going to run for mayor and how long poor Angela Sims has to live and what Guy Donnelly said to men when he asked her to marry him. The three Waylands, mother and daughters, hunt in a group. They send meaning glances to one another across the room and at parties they get together and exchange bulletins in a corner. On passing the Wayland house one is uncomfortably aware of shadowy forms lurking in the windows and of parlor curtains that are agitated for no apparent cause. Therefore it was with a groan that I rose and prepared to follow Nora into the house. Something in my eye caused her to charn at the very door. Don't you dare, she hissed. Then, banishing the warning scowl from her face and assuming a near smile, she entered the room and I followed miserably at her heels. The Waylands rose and came forward effusively. Mrs. Wayland, plump, dark, valuable. Sally, lean, swarthy, vindictive. Flossy, pudgy, powdered, overdressed. They eyed me hungrily. I felt that they were searching my features for signs of incipient insanity. Dear, dear girl, bubbled the billowy Flossy, kissing the end of my nose and fastening her eye on my ringless left hand. Sally contented herself with a limp and fishy handshake. She and I were sworn enemies in our schoolgirl days and a baleful gleam still lurked in Sally's eye. Mrs. Wayland bestowed on me a motherly hug that enveloped me in an atmosphere of liquid face wash, strong perfumery and fried lard. Mrs. Wayland is a famous cook, said she. We've been thinking of calling ever since you were brought home, but dear me, you've been looking so poorly. I just said to the girls, wait till the poor thing feels more like seeing her old friends. Tell me, how are you feeling now? The three sat forward in their chairs and attitudes of tense waiting. I resolved that if ere I must it should be on the side of safety. I turned to Sister Nora. How am I feeling anyway, Nora? I guardedly inquired. Nora's face was a study. Why, Don, dear, she said sugar-sweet. No doubt you know better than I, but I'm sure that you're a wonderfully improved, almost your old self, in fact. Don't you think she looks splendid, Mrs. Wayland? The three Waylands tore their gaze from my blank countenance to exchange a series of meaning looks. I suppose, purred Mrs. Wayland, that your awful trouble was the real cause of your sickness. Worrying about it and grieving as you must have. She pronounces it with a capital T, and I know she means Peter. I hate her for it. Trouble, I chirped. Trouble never troubles me. I just work too hard. That's all and acquired an awful tired. All work and no play makes Jill a nervous wreck, you know. At that, the elephantine flossy wagged a playful finger at me. Oh, now you can't make us believe that just because we're from the country. We know all about you gay New Yorkers with your bohemian ways and your midnight studio suppers and your cigarettes and cocktails and hijinks. Memory painted a swift mental picture of Don O'Hara as she used to tumble into bed after a whirl wind day at the office. Two dogs tired to give her hair even one half of the prescribed one hundred strokes of the brush. But in turn, I shook a reproving forefinger at flossy. You've been reading some naughty society novel. One of those millionaire divorce actress automobile novels. Dear, dear, shall I ever forget the first New York actress I ever met or what she said? I felt more than saw a warning movement from Sis. But the three Waylands had hitched forward in their chairs. What did she say, gurgled flossy? Was it something real reasic? Well, it was at a late supper, a studio supper given in her honor, I confessed. Yes, hissed the Waylands. And this actress, she was one of those musical comedy actresses, you know. I remember her part called for a good deal of kicking about in a short Dutch costume. Came in rather late after the performance. She was wearing a regal looking fur-edged evening wrap and she still wore all her makeup. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sis. Sink back with an air of resignation. And she threw open the door and said, Yes, hissed the Waylands again, wetting their lips. Said, Folks, I just had a wire from mother up in Maine. The boy has the croop. I'm scared green. I hate to spoil the party, but don't ask me to stay. I want to go home to the flat and blubber. I didn't even stop to take my makeup off. My God, if anything should happen to the boy, we'll have a good time without me. Jim's waiting outside. A silence. Then, Who was Jim? asked Flossy, hopefully. Jim was her husband, of course. He was in the same company. Another silence. Is that all? Demanded Sally from the corner in which she had been glowering. All? You a natural girl. Is it one husband enough? Mrs. Wayland smiled an uncertain wavering smile. They're passed among the three, a series of cabalistic signs. They rose simultaneously. How quaint you are, exclaimed Mrs. Wayland, and so amusing. Come girls, we must entire miss, uh, Mrs. Er, with another meaning, look at my bare left hand. My husband's name is still Orm, I prompted, quite, quite pleasantly. Oh, certainly. I'm so forgetful. And one reads such queer things in the newspapers nowadays. Divorces and separations and soulmates and things. There was a note of gentle insinuation in her voice. Nora stepped firmly into the fray. Yes, doesn't one? What a comfort it must be to you to know that your dear girls were safe at home with you and no doubt will be secure for years to come from the buffeting winds of matrimony. There was a tinge of purple in Mrs. Wayland's face as she moved toward the door, gathering her brood about her. Now that dear Dawn is almost normal again, I shall send my little girlies over real often. She must find it very dull here after her, uh, life in New York. Not at all, I said hurriedly. Not at all. You see, I'm writing a book. My entire day is occupied. A book, screeched the three. How interesting! What is it? When will it be published? I avoided Nora's baleful eyes as I answered their questions and performed the final adieu. As the door closed, Nora and I faced each other glaring. Hussies, hissed Nora, whereupon it struck us funny and we fell a shrieking heap into the nearest chair. Finally, Ciss dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, drew a long breath, and asked with elaborate sarcasm why I hadn't made it a play instead of a book while I was about it. But I mean it, I declared. I've had enough of loafing. Max must unpack my typewriter tonight. I'm homesick for a look at the keys, and tomorrow I'm to be installed in the cubbyhole off the dining room, and I defy anyone to enter it on peril of their lives. If you value the lives of your offspring, warn them away from that door. Von Gerhardt said that there was writing in my system, and by the great horned spoon in the beard of the prophet I'll have it out. Besides, I need the money. Nora, dear, how does one set about writing a book? It seems like such a large order. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett Don O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber Chapter 4 Don Develops a Hyme V It's hard trying to develop into a real writer lady in the bosom of one's family, especially when the family refuses to take one seriously. Seven years of newspaper grind have taught me the fallacy of trying to write by the inspiration method. But there is such a thing as a train of thought, and mine is constantly being derailed, and wrecked and pitched about. Scarcely am I settled in my cubbyhole, typewriter before me, the working plan of a story buzzing about in my brain, when I hear my name called in muffled tones, as though the speaker were laboring with a mouthful of hairpins. I pay no attention. I have just given my heroine a pair of calm gray eyes shaded with black lashes and hair to match. A voice floats down from the upstairs regions. Don, O' Don, just run and rescue the cucumbers out of the top of the icebox, will you? The iceman's coming and he'll squash them. A parting jab at my heroine's hair and eyes, and I'm off to save the cucumbers. Back at my typewriter once more, shall I make my heroine petite or grande? I decide that stateliness and Gibson-esque height should accompany the calm gray eyes. I rattle away happily, the plot unfolding itself in some mysterious way. Sis opens the door a little and peers in. She is dressed for the street. Don, dear, I'm going to the dressmakers. Freed is upstairs cleaning the bathroom, so take a little squint at the roast now and then, will you? See that it doesn't burn and that there's plenty of gravy. O' and Don, tell the milkman we want an extra half pint of cream today. The tickets are on the kitchen shelf back of the clock. I'll be back in an hour. Hmm, I reply. Sis shuts the door, but opens it again almost immediately. Don't let the infants bother you, but if Freed is upstairs and they come to you for something to eat, don't let them have any cookies before dinner. If they're really hungry, they'll eat bread and butter. I promise, dreamily, my last typewritten sentence still running through my head, the gravy seems to have got into the heroine's calm gray eyes. What heroine could remain calm-eyed when her creator's mind is filled with roast beef? A half hour elapses before I get back on the track. Then appears the hero, a tall blonde youth, fair to behold. I make him two yards high and endow him with a pair of clothing advertisement shoulders. There assails my nostrils a fearful smell of scorching, the roast, a wild rush into the kitchen. I fling open the oven door. The roast is mahogany-colored and gravy-less. It takes fifteen minutes of the most desperate first day to the injured measures before the roast is revived. Back to the writing. It has lost its charm. The gray-eyed heroine is a stick. She moves like an Indian lady outside a cigar shop. The hero is a milk-and-water sissy without a vital spark in him. What's the use of trying to write anyway? Nobody wants my stuff. Good for nothing except dubbing on a newspaper. Wrap, wrap, rapidy wrap, wrap, bing, milk. I dash into the kitchen. No milk, no milkman. I fly to the door. He is disappearing around the corner of the house. Hi, Mr. Milkman. Say, Mr. Milkman, with frantic beckonings. He churns. He lifts up his voice. The screen door was locked, so I left use your milk on top of the icebox on the back porch. Thought like the higher girl was upstairs and I could get the tickets tomorrow. I explain about the cream, adding that it is wanted for shortcake. The explanation does not seem to cheer him. He appears to be a very gloomy and reserved milkman. I fancy that he is in the habit of indulging in a little airy persiflage with Frida, oh, mornings, and he finds me a poor substitute for her red-cheeked comeliness. The milk safely stowed away in the icebox. I have another look at the roast. I am dipping up spoonfuls of brown gravy and pouring them over the surface of the roast in approved basting style. When there is a rush, a scramble, and two hard bodies precipitate themselves upon my legs so suddenly that for a moment my head pitches forward into the oven. I withdraw my head from the oven hastily. The basting spoon is immersed in the bottom of the pan. I turn indignant. The spalpenes look up at me with innocent eyes. You little devils, what do you mean by shoving your old ant into the oven? It's cannibals, you are. The idea pleases them. They release my legs and execute a savage war dance around me. The spalpenes are firm in the belief that I was brought to their home for their sole amusement and they refuse to take me seriously. The spalpenes themselves are two of the finest examples of real humor that ever were perpetrated upon parents. Sheila is the firstborn. Nora decided that she should be an Irish beauty and bestowed upon her a name that reeks of the bogs. Whereupon Sheila, at the age of six, is as flaxen-haired and blue-eyed install at a little German mansion as ever fooled her parents and she is a feminine reproduction of her German dad. Two years later came a sturdy boy and they named him Hans in a flaunt of defiance. Hans is black-haired, grey-eyed and Irish-ish Kalarney. We're awful hungry, announces Sheila. Can't you wait until dinner time? Such a grand dinner. Sheila and Hans roll their eyes to convey to me that were they to wait until dinner for sustenance we should find but their lifeless forms. Well then, Auntie will get a nice piece of bread and butter for each of you. Don't want bread and butty, shrieks Hans. Want cookie? Cookie, echoes Sheila pounding on the kitchen table with a rescued basting spoon. You can't have cookies before dinner. They're bad for your insides. Can too, disputes Hans. Huida gives us cookies. Want cookie? Wailingly. Please, please, Auntie Donnie Deary. Weedle Sheila wriggling her soft little fingers in my hand. But mother never lets you have cookies before dinner. I retort severely. She knows they are bad for you. Poo, she does too. She always says no, not a cookie. And then we bag and screech and then she says oh for pity's sake, free to give them a cookie and send them out. One cookie can't kill them. Sheila's imitation is delicious. Hans catches the word screech and takes it as his cue. He begins a series of ear-piercing whales. Sheila surveys him with pride and then takes the whale up in a minor key. Their teamwork is marvelous. I fly to the cookie jar and extract two round and sugary confections. I thrust them into the pink eager palms. The whales cease. Solemnly they place one cookie atop the other, measuring the circlets with grave eyes. Mine's a weeny bit bigger in yours this time, decides Sheila, and holds her cookie heroically while Hans takes a just and lawful bite out of his sister's larger share. The blessed little angels I say to myself melting, the dear unselfish little sweeties and give each of them another cookie. Back to my typewriter, but the words flatly refuse to come now. I make six false starts, bite all my best fingernails, screw my hair into a wilderness of cork screws and give it up. No doubt a real ladywriter could write on, unruffled and unhearing, while the iceman squashed the cucumbers and the roast burned to a frazzle and the small peens perished of hunger. Possessed of the real spark of genius, trivialities like milkmen and cucumbers could not dim its glow. Perhaps all successful ladywriters with real live sparks have cooks and scullery maids and need not worry about basting and gravy and milkmen. This book writing is all very well for those who have a large faith in the future and an equally large bank account, but my future will have to be hand-carved and my bank account has always been an all too small pay envelope at the end of each week. It will be months before the book is shaped and finished and my pocket book is empty. Last week Max sent money for the care of Peter. He and Nora think that I do not know. Von Gerhard was here in August. I told him that all my firm resolutions to forsake newspaperdom forever was slipping away one by one. I have heard of the fascination of the newspaper office, he said in his understanding way. I believe you have a Heimwee for it, not? Heimwee, that's the word I had agreed. After you have been a newspaper writer for seven years and loved it, you will be a newspaper writer at heart and by instinct at least until you die. There's no getting away from it. It's in the blood. Newspaper men have been known to inherit fortunes, to enter politics, to write books, and become famous, to degenerate and to press agents and become infamous, to blossom into personages, to sink into non-entities, but their news nose remained a part of them, and the inky, smoky, stuffy smell of a newspaper office was ever sweet in their nostrils. But, not yet, Von Gerhard had said, it unless you want to have again this miserable business of the sick nerfs, wait yet a few months. And so I have waited, saying nothing to Nora and Max, but I want to be in the midst of things. I miss the sensation of having my fingers at the pulse of the big old world. I'm lonely for the noise and the rush and the hard work. For a glimpse of the busy local room just before press time, when the lights are swimming in a smoky haze, and the big presses downstairs are thundering their warning to hurry, and the men are breezing in from their runs with the grist of news that will be ground finer and finer as it passes through the mill of copy readers and editors' hands. I want to be there in the thick of the confusion that is, after all so orderly. I want to be there when the telephone bells are zinging and the typewriters are snapping and the messenger boys are shuffling in and out, and the office kids are scuffling in a corner, and the big city editor, collar off, sleeves rolled up from his great arms, hair bristling wildly above his green eye shade, his swearing gently and smoking cigarette after cigarette, lighting each fresh one at the dying glow of the last. I would give a year of my life to hear him say, I don't mind telling you Beatrice Fairfax that that was a darn good story you got on the millhop divorce. The other fellows have an a word that isn't rehash. All of which is most unwomanly, for is not marriage woman's highest aim and home her true sphere? Haven't I tried both? I ought to know. I merely have been miscast in this life's drama. My part should have been that of one who makes her way alone. Peter with his thin cruel lips and his shaking hands and his haggard face and his smoldering eyes is a shadow forever blotting out the sunny places in my path. I was meant to be an old maid like the terrible old kitty O'Hara, not one of the tatting and tea kind, but an impressive bustling old girl with a double chin. The sharp tongueed kitty O'Hara used to say that being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning. A really delightful sensation when you see struggling. Nora has pleaded with me to be more like other women of my age and for her sake I've tried. She has led me about to bridge parties and tea fights and I have tried to act as though I were enjoying it all but I knew that I wasn't getting on a bit. I have come to the conclusion that one year of newspaper and counts for two years of ordinary existence and that while I'm 28 in the family Bible I'm fully 40 inside. When one day may bring under one's pen a priest, a pauper, a prostitute, a philanthropist each with a story to tell and each requiring to be bullied or cajoled or bribed or threatened or tricked into telling it then the end of that day's work finds one looking out at the world with eyes that are very tired and as old as the world itself. I'm spoiled for sowing bees and church sociables and afternoon bridges. A hunger for the city is upon me. The long lazy summer days have slipped by. There is an autumn tang in the air. The breeze has a touch that is sharp. Winter in a little northern town. I should go mad. But winter in the city. The streets at dusk on a frosty evening. The shop windows arranged by artist hands for the beauty loving eyes of women. The rows of lights like jewels strung on an invisible chain. The glitter of brass on enamel is the endless procession of motors flashes past. The smartly gowned women. The keen-eyed nervous men. The shrill note of the crossing policeman's whistle. Every smoke grime to wall and pillar taking on a mysterious shadowy beauty in the purple dusk. Every unsightly blot obscured by the kindly night. But best of all the fascination of the people I'd like to know. They pop up now and then in the shifting crowds and are gone the next moment leaving behind them a vague regret. Sometimes I call them the people I'd like to know and sometimes I call them the people I know I'd like. But it means much the same. Their faces flash by in the crowd and are gone. But I recognize them instantly as belonging to my beloved circle of unknown friends. Once it was a girl opposite me in a car. A girl with a wide humorous mouth and tragic eyes and a hole in her shoe. Once it was a big homely redheaded giant of a man with an engineering magazine sticking out of his coat pocket. He was standing at a book counter reading Dickens like a schoolboy and laughing in all the right places. I know because I peaked over his shoulder to see. Another time it was a sprightly little grizzled old woman staring into a dazzling shop window in which was displayed a wonderful collection of fashionably impossible hats and gowns. She was dressed all in rusty black was a little old lady and she had a quaint cast in her left eye that gave her the oddest most sporting look. The cast was working overtime as she gazed at the gowns and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty black bonnet trembled with her silent mirth. She looked like one of those clever epigrammatic dowdy old duchesses that one reads about in English novels. I'm sure she had cardamom seeds in her shabby bag and a carriage with a crest on it waiting for her just around the corner. I ached to slip my hand through her arm and ask her what she thought of it all. I know that her reply would have been exquisitely witty and audacious and I did so long to hear her say it. No doubt some good angel tugs at my common sense restraining me from doing these things that I am tempted to do. Of course it would be madness for a woman to address unknown redheaded men with the look of an engineer about them and a book of dickens in their hands or perky old woman with nutcracker faces or girls with wide humorous mouths. Oh it couldn't be done I suppose. They would clap me in a padded cell in no time if I were to say. Mr. Redheaded Man I'm so glad your heart is young enough for dickens. I love him too enough to read him standing at a book counter in a busy shop. And do you know I like the squareness of your jaw and the way your eyes crinkle up when you laugh. And as for your being an engineer why one of the very first men I ever loved was the engineer in Soldiers of Fortune. I wonder what the girl in the car would have said if I had crossed over to her and put my hand on her arm and spoken thus. Girl with the wide humorous mouth and the tragic eyes and the hole in your shoe I think you must be an awfully good sort. I'll wager you paint or write or act or do something clever like that for a living. But from that hole in your shoe which you have inked so carefully although it persists in showing white at the seams I fancy you are stumbling over a rather stony bit of life's road just now. And from the look in your eyes girl I'm afraid the stones have cut and bruised rather cruelly. But when I look at your smiling humorous mouth I know that you are trying to laugh at the hurts. I think that this morning when you inked your shoe for the dozens time you hesitated between tears and laughter and the laugh one thank god. Please keep right on laughing and don't you dare stop for a minute. Because pretty soon you'll come to a smooth easy place and then won't you be glad that you didn't give up to lie down by the roadside weary of your hurts. Oh it would never do never and yet no charm possessed by the people I know and like can compare with the fascination of those people I'd like to know and know I would like. Here at home with Nora there are no faces in the crowds there are no crowds when you turn the corner at Main Street you are quite sure that you will see the same people in the same places. You know that Mamie Hayes will be flapping her duster just outside the door of the jewelry store where she clerks. She gazes up and down Main Street as she flaps the cloth her bright eyes keeping a sharp watch for stray traveling men that may chance to be passing. You know that there will be the same lounging group of white-faced vacant-eyed youth outside the pool room. Dr. Briggs's patient runabout will be standing at his office doorway. Outside his butcher shop Assemblyman Schenck will be holding forth on the subject of county politics to a group of red-faced badly dressed prosperous-looking farmers and townsmen and as he talks a circle of brown tobacco juice which surrounds the group closes in upon them nearer and nearer. And there in a roomy chair in a corner of the public library reference room facing the big front window you will see Old Man Randall. His white hair forms a halo above his pitiful drink-marred face. He was to have been a great lawyer was Old Man Randall but on the road to fame he met Drink and she grasped his arm and led him down byways and into crooked lanes and finally into ditches and he never arrived at his goal. There in that library window nook it is cool in summer and warm in winter. So he sits in dreams holding an open volume unread on his knees. Sometimes he writes hunched up in his corner feverishly scribbling at ridiculous plays short stories and novels which later he will insist on reading to the tittering schoolboys and girls who come into the library to do their courting and reference work. Presently when it grows dusk Old Man Randall will put away his book throw his coat over his shoulders sleeves dangling flowing white locks sweeping the frayed velvet collar. He will march out with his soldierly tread humming a bit of a tune down the street and into Vandermeister's saloon where he will beg a drink into lunch and some man will give it to him for the sake of what Old Man Randall might have been. All these things you know and knowing them what is left for the imagination how can one dream dreams about people when one knows how much they pay their hired girl and what they have for dinner on Wednesdays. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Don O'Hara The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett Don O'Hara The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber Chapter 5 The Absurd Become Serious I can understand the emotions of a broken down warhorse that is hitched to a vegetable wagon. I am going to Milwaukee to work. It is a thing to make the gods hold their sides and roll down from their mountain peaks with laughter. After New York, Milwaukee. Of course, Von Gerhard is to blame. But I think even he sees the humor of it. It happened in this way. On a day when I was indulging in a particularly greenery-yallory fit of gloom, Nora rushed into my room. I think I was mooning over some old papers or letters or ribbons or some such truck and the charming knife-turning way that women have when they are blue. Out with his cried Nora. On with your hat and coat. I've just had a wire from Ernst Von Gerhard. He's coming and you look like an underdone dill pickle. You aren't half as blooming as when he was here in August and this is October. Get out and walk until your cheeks are so red that Von Gerhard will refuse to believe that this fiery-faced puffing bouncing creature is the green and limp thing that huddled in a chair a few months ago. Out you go. And out I went. Hatless, I strode country words. Leaving paved streets and concrete walks far behind. There were drifts of fallen leaves all about and I scuffled through them durally trying to feel gloomy and old and useless and failing because of the tang in the air and the red and gold wonder of the frost-kissed leaves and the regular pump-pump of good red blood that was coursing through my body as per Nora's request. In a field at the edge of the town just where city and country began to have a bowing acquaintance the college boys writ football practice. Their scarlet sweaters made gay patches of color against the dull gray brown of the autumn grass. Seven. Eighteen. Two. Four. Called a voice. There followed a scuffle a creaking of leather on leather a thud. I watched them a bit enviously walking backwards until a twist in the road hid them from view. That same twist transformed my path into a real country road a brown, dusty, monotonous Michigan country road that went severely about its business never once stopping to flirt with the blushing autumn woodland at its left or to dally with the dimpling ravine at its right. Now if that were an English country road thought I a socially inclined happy go lucky out for pleasure English country road one might expect something of it. On an English country road this would be the psychological moment for the appearance of a blonde god in gray tweed. What a delightful time of it Richard Legallion's hero had on his quest. He could not stroll down the most innocent looking lane he might not loiter among the most out of the way path he never ambled over the barest piece of country road that he did not come face to face with some witty and lovely woman creature also in search of things unconventional and able to quote charming lines from Chaucer to him. Ah, but that was England and this is America. I realize it sadly as I step out of the road to allow a yellow milk wagon to rattle past. The red letters on the yellow milk cart informed the reader that it is the property of August Schemmeltfenig of Hickory Grove. The Schemmeltfenig I may be seen staring down upon me from the bit of glass in the rear as the cart rattles ahead doubtless being suspicious of hatless young women wandering along country roads at dusk alone. There was that in the staring eye to which I took exception. It wore an expression which made me feel sure that the mouth below it was all a grin if I could but have seen it. It was bad enough to be stared at by the fishy Schemmeltfenig eye but to be grinned at by the Schemmeltfenig mouth I resented it. In order to show my resentment I turned my back on the Schemmeltfenig cart and pretended to look up the road which I had just traveled. I pretended to look up the road and then I did look in earnest. No wonder the Schemmeltfenig eye and mouth had worn the leering expression. The blonde god in gray tweed was swinging along toward me. I knew that he was blonde because he wore no hat and the last rays of the October sun were making a little halo effect about his head. I knew that his gray clothes were tweed because every well regulated hero on a country road whereas tweed. It's almost a religion with them. He was not near enough to make a glance at his features possible. I turned around and continued my walk. The yellow cart with its impudent Schemmeltfenig leer was disappearing in a cloud of dust. Shades of the Duchess and Bertha M. Clay how does one greet a blonde god in gray tweed on a country road when one has him? The blonde god solved the problem for me. Hi, he called. I did not turn. There was a moment's silence. Then there came a shrill insistent whistle of the kind that is made by placing four fingers between the teeth. It is a favorite with the gallery gods. I would not have believed that gray tweed god stooped to it. Hi, called the voice again, very near now. Liburgot, never have I seen so proud a young woman. I world about to face von Gerhard, a strangely boyish and unprofessional looking von Gerhard. Young man, I said severely, have you been a follower of me? For miles, groaned he, as we shook hands. You walk like a grenadier. I am sent by the charming Nora to tell you that you are to come home to mix the salad dressing for there's company for supper. I am the company. I was still a bit dazed. But how did you know which road to take? And when? Wunderbar, Niquar. Laugh von Gerhard. But really quite simple. I come in on an earlier train than I had expected. Chat a moment with sister Nora, inquire after the health of my patient, and am told that she is running away from a horde of blue devils, quote your charming sister, that have swarmed about her all day. What direction did her flight take? I ask. Sister Nora shrugs her shoulders and presumes it is the road which shows the reddest and yellowest autumn colors. That road will be your road. So. Poo! How simple! That is a second disappointment you have given me today. But how was that possible? The first has not had time to happen. The first was yourself, I replied rudely. I had been longing for an adventure, and when I saw you way up the road, such an unusual figure for our Michigan country roads, I forgot that I was a disappointed old grass-witter with a history, and I grew young again, and my heart jumped up into my throat, and I says to myself, says I. Enter the hero, and it was only you. Von Gerhard stared a moment, a curious look on his face. Then he laughed one of those rare laughs of his, and I joined him because I was strangely young, light, and happy to be alive. You walk and enjoy walking? Yes. Asked Von Gerhard, scanning my face. Your cheeks, they are like, well, as unlike the cheeks of the German girls as Diana's are unlike a dairymaids, and the nerfs, they no longer jump, eh? Oh, they jump, but not with weariness, they jump to get into action again. From a life of too much excitement I have gone to the other extreme. I shall be dead of Inuit in another six months. And Nui, Muse T, and you are, how is it, twenty-eight years, yes? Hmm. There was a world of exasperation in the last exclamation. I am a thousand years old, it made me exclaim, a million. I will prove to you that you are sixteen, declared Von Gerhard, calmly. We had come to a fork in the road. At the right, the narrow road ran between two rows of great maples that made an arch of gold and splendor. The frost had kissed them into a gorgeous radiance. Sunshine Avenue, announced Von Gerhard, it beckons us away from home and supper and salad dressing and duty, but who knows what we shall find at the end of it. Let's explore, I suggested. It is splendidly golden enough to be enchanted. We entered the yellow canopy pathway. Let us pretend this is Germany, yes, pleaded Von Gerhard. This golden pathway will end in a neat little glass-roofed restaurant with tables and chairs outside and comfortable German papas and mamas and pigtail children sitting at the tables drinking coffee or beer. There will be stout waiters and a red-faced host, and we will seat ourselves at one of the tables and I will wave my hand and one of the stout waiters will come flying. Will you have coffee, fra line, or beer? It sounds prosaic, but it is very, very good, as you will see. Pathways in Germany always end in coffee and kuchen and waiters and white aprons. But, oh no, I exclaimed, for his mood was infectious. This is France. Please. The golden pathway will end in a picturesque little French farm with a dairy and in the doorway of the farmhouse there will be a red-skirted peasant woman with a white cap and a baby on her arm and sabose. Oh, surely she will wear sabose. Most certainly she will wear sabose. Von Gerhard said heatedly and blue-knitted stockings and the baby's name is Mimi. We had taken hands and were skipping down the pathway now like two excited children. Let's run, I suggested. And run we did, like two mad creatures, until we rounded a gentle curve and brought up panting within a foot of a decrepit rail fence. The rail fence enclosed a stubbly lumpy field. The field was inhabited by an inquiring cow. Von Gerhard and I stood quite still, hand in hand, gazing at the cow. Then we turned slowly and looked at each other. This pathway of glorified maples ends in a cow, I said solemnly. At which we both shrieked with mirth, leaning on the decrepit fence and mopping our eyes with our handkerchiefs. Did I not say you were 16, taunted Von Gerhard, we were getting surprisingly well acquainted. Such a scolding as we shall get, it will be quite dark before we are home, Nora will be tearing her hair. It was a true prophecy, as we stampeded up the steps the door was flung open, disclosing a tragic figure. Such a steak, welled Nora, and it has been done for hours and hours, and now it looks like a piece of fried ear, where have you two driveling idiots been, and mushrooms too? She means that the royal steak was further enhanced by mushrooms. I explained in response to Von Gerhard's bewildered look. We marched into the house, trying not to appear like sneak thieves. Max, pipe in mouth, surveyed us blandly. Fine color you've got, Don, he remarked. There is such a thing as overdoing his health business, snapped Nora, with a great deal of acidity for her. I didn't tell you to make them purple, you know. Max turned to Von Gerhard. Now, what does she mean by that, do you suppose, eh, Ernst? Softly, brother, softly, whispered Von Gerhard. When women exchange remarks that apparently are simple, and yet that you, a man, cannot understand, then know there is a woman's war going on, and step softly and hold your peace. Aberutik. Calm was restored with the appearance of the steak, which was found to have survived the period of waiting, and to be incredibly juicy and tender. Presently, we were all settled once more in the great beamed living room, cis at the piano, the two men smoking their after-dinner cigars with that idiotic expression of contentment, which always adorns the masculine face on such occasions. I looked at them, at those three who had done so much for my happiness and well-being, and something within me said, Now, speak now. Nora was playing very softly, so that the spalpeens upstairs might not be disturbed. I took a long breath and made the plunge. Nora, if you'll continue the slow music, I'll be much obliged. The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. Don't be absurd, said Nora, over her shoulder and went on playing. I never was more serious in my life, good folks as all. I've got to be. This butterfly existence has gone on long enough. Nora and Max and Mr. Doctor Man, I am going away. Nora's hands crashed down on the piano keys with a jangling discord. She swung about to face me. Not New York again, Don. Not New York. I am afraid so, I answered. Max, bless his great brotherly heart, rose and came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. Don't you like it here, girly? Want to be hauled home on a shutter again, do you? You know that as long as we have a home, you have one. We need you here. But I shook my head. From his chair at the other side of the room I could feel Von Gerhard's gaze fixed upon us. He had said nothing. Need me. No one needs me. Don't worry, I'm not going to become modeling about it. But I don't belong here and you know it. I have my work to do. Nora is the best sister that a woman ever had. And Max, you're an angel brother-in-law. But how can I stay on here and keep myself respect? I took Max's big hand in mine and gathered courage from it. But you have been working, well, Nora, every morning. And I thought the book was coming on beautifully. And I'm sure it will be a wonderful book, Don Deere. You were so clever. Oh, the book. It is too uncertain. Perhaps it will go, but perhaps it won't. And then what? It will be months before the book is properly polished off. And then I may pedal it around for more months. No, I can't afford to trifle with uncertainties. Every newspaper man or woman writes a book. It's like having the measles. There is not a newspaper man living who does not believe in his heart that if he could only take a month or two away from the telegraph desk or the police run, he could write the book of the year, not to speak of the great American play. Why, just look at me. I've only been writing seriously for a few weeks and already the best magazines in the country are refusing my manuscripts daily. Don't joke, said Nora, coming over to me. I can't stand it. Why not? Much better than weeping, isn't it? And anyway, I'm no subject for tears anymore. Dr. Von Gerhard will tell you how well and strong I am, won't you, Herr Doctor? Well, said Von Gerhard in his careful deliberate English, since you ask me, I should say that you might last about one year in New York. There. What did I tell you? cried Nora. What utter blither I scoffed, turning to glare at Von Gerhard. Gently, warned Max, such disrespect to the man who pulled you back from the edge of the yawning grave only six months ago. Yawning fiddle sticks, snapped I elegantly. There was nothing wrong with me except that I wanted to be fussed over, and I have been, and I've loved it, but it must stop now. I rose and walked over to the table and faced Von Gerhard, sitting there in the depths of a great chair. You do not seem to realize that I am not free to come and go and work and play and laugh and live like other women. There is my living to make, and there is Peter Orm. Do you think that I could stay on here like this? Oh, I know that Max is not a poor man, but he is not a rich man either, and there are the children to be educated, and besides, Max married Nora O'Hara, not the whole O'Hara tribe. I want to go to work. I am not a free woman, but when I am working I forget, and am almost happy. I tell you I must be well again. I will be well. I am well. At the end of which dramatic period I spoiled the whole effect by bowing my head on the table and giving way to a fit of weeping, such as I had not had since the days of my illness. Looks like it, said Max, at which I decided to laugh and the situation was saved. It was then that Von Gerhard proposed a thing that set a staring at him in amused wonder. He came over and stood looking down at us, his hands outspread upon the big library table, his body bent forward in an attitude of eager intentness. I remember thinking what wonderful hands they were, true indexes of the man's character, broad, white, surgingly hands, the fingers almost square at the tips. They were hands as different from those slender, nervous, unsteady, womanly hands of Peter Orm as any hands could be, I thought. They were hands made for work that called for delicate strength if such a paradox could be. Hands to cling to, to gain courage from, hands that spelled power and reserve. I looked at them fascinated as I often had done before and thought that I had never seen such sane hands. You have done me the honor to include me in this little family conclave, began Ernst von Gerhard. I am going to take advantage of your trust. I shall give you some advice, a thing I usually keep for unpleasant professional occasions. Do not go back to New York. But I know New York. In New York, the newspaper part of it knows me. Where else can I go? You have your book to finish. You could never finish it there, is it not so? I'm afraid I shrugged my shoulders. It was all so much harder than I had expected. What did they want me to do? I asked myself bitterly. Von Gerhard went on. Why not go where the newspaper work will not be so nerve-wracking, where you still might find time for this other work that is dear to you and that may bring its reward in time? He reached out and took my hand into his great steady clasp. Come to the happy, healthy German town called Milwaukee, yes? Ach, you may laugh. But newspaper work is newspaper work the world over, because men and women are just men and women in the world over. But there you could live sanely and work not too hard, and there would be spare hours for the book that is near your heart. And I, I will speak of you to Norberg of the Post, and on Sundays if you are good I may take you along the marvelous lake drives of my little red one about, yes? I'll be wonder-bar those drives are. So. Then. Milwaukee, shrieked Max and Nora and I together. After New York, Milwaukee. Laugh, said Von Gerhardt quite composedly. I give you until tomorrow morning to stop laughing. At the end of that time it will not seem quite so amusing. No joke is so funny after one has contemplated it for twelve hours. The voice of Nora, the tempterist, sounded close to my ear. Don, dear, just think how many million miles nearer you would be to Max and me and home. Oh, you have all gone mad. The thing is impossible. I shan't go back to a country sheet in my old age. I suppose that in two more years I shall be editing a mother's column on an agricultural weekly. Norberg would be delighted to get you, used Von Gerhardt, and it would be day work instead of night work. And you would send me a weekly bulletin on Don's health, wouldn't you, Ernst? pleaded Nora, and you teach her to drink beer and she shall grow so fat that the small peens won't know their auntie. At last. How much do they pay? I asked in desperation. And the thing that it appeared so absurd at first began to take on the shape of reality. Von Gerhardt did speak to Norberg of the post, and I am to go to Milwaukee next week. The skeleton of the book manuscript is stowed safely away in the bottom of my trunk and Nora has filled in the remaining space with sundry flannels and hot water bags and medicine flasks so that I feel like a schoolgirl on her way to boarding school instead of like a seasoned old newspaper woman with a capital past and a shaky future. I wish that I were chummier with the Irish saints. I need them now. End of chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Don O'Hara The Girl Who Laughed This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett Don O'Hara The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Furmer Chapter 6 Steeped in German I am living at a little private hotel just across from the Courthouse Square with its scarlet geraniums and its pretty fountain. The house is filled with German civil engineers, mechanical engineers and hair professors from the German Academy. On Sunday mornings we have van Cuchen with current jelly and the hair professors come down to breakfast in fearful flappy German slippers. I'm the only creature in the place that isn't just over from Germany. Even the dog is a doxened. It is so unbelievable that every day or two I go down to Wisconsin Street and gaze at the stars and stripes floating from the government building in order to convince myself that this is America. It needs only a Kaiser or so and a bit of Untrad in London to be quite complete. The little private hotel is kept by Hare and Frau Knopf. After one has seen them one quite understands why the place is steeped in a German atmosphere up to its eyebrows. I never would have found it myself. It was Dr. von Gerhard who had suggested Knopf's and who had paved the way for my coming here. You will find it quite unlike anything you have ever tried before, he warned me. Very German it is and very, very clean and most inexpensive. Also, I think you will find material there and how is it you call it? Copy, yes. Well, there should be copy in plenty and types. But you shall see. From the moment I rang the Knopf doorbell I saw. The dapper, cheerful Hare Knopf wearing a disappointed Kaiser Wilhelm moustache opened the door. I scarcely had begun to make my wishes known when he interrupted with a large wave of the hand and an elaborate German bow. Ock, yes. You would be the lady of whom the Hare Doctor has spoken. Give this. Frau Orm, Knopf. But so a young lady I did not expect to see. I room we have saved for you. Aber Wunderhübsch. It makes me much pleasure to show. Folgen Sie mir, bitte. You you speak English? I faltered with visions of my evening spent on expressing myself in the sign language. English. But yes, here in Milwaukee it gives Aber mostly German. And then too, I've been only 20 years in this country and always in Milwaukee. Here is it. Gumutlich. And mostly it gives German. I tried not to look frightened and followed him up to the but wonderfully beautiful room. To my joy, I found it high ceilinged airy and huge with a great vault of a clothes closet bristling with hooks and boasting an unbelievable number of shelves. My trunk was swallowed up in it. Never in all my boarding house experience have I seen such a room or such a closet. The closet must have been built for a bride's trousseau in the days of hoop skirts and scuttle bonnets. There was a separate and distinct hook for each and every one of my most obscure garments. I tried to spread them out. I used two hooks to every petticoat and three for my kimono and when I had finished there were rows of hooks to spare. Tears of shelves yawned for hat boxes which I possessed not. Bluebeard's wives could have held a family reunion in that closet and invited all of Solomon's spouses. Finally in desperation I gathered all my poor garments together and hung them in a sociable bunch on the hooks nearest the door. How I should have loved to have shown that closet to a select circle of New York boarding house landlady's. After wrestling in vain with the forest of hooks I turned my attention to my room. I inked a towel thing off the center table and replaced it with a scarf that Peter had picked up in the Orient. I set up my typewriter in a corner near a window and dug a gay cushion or two in a shaping dish out of my trunk. I distributed photographs of Nora and Max in the spa peens separately in couples and in groups. Then I bounced up and down in a huge yellow brocade chair and found it unbelievably soft and comfortable. Of course, I reflected after the big veranda and the apple tree at Nora's and the leather cushion comfort of her library and the charming tones of her oriental rugs and hangings. Oh, stop your carping Don, I told myself. You can't expect charming tones and oriental doodads and apple trees in a German boarding house. Anyhow, there's running water in the room. For general utility purposes that's better than a pink prayer rug. There was a time when I thought that it was the luxuries that made life worth living. That was in the old Bohemian days. Necessities, I used to laugh. Who? Who cares about the necessities? What if the dish pan does leak? Is the luxuries that count? Bohemia and luxuries, half a dozen lean boarding house years have steered me safely past that. After such a course in common sense, you don't stand back and examine the pictures of a pink moses and a nest of purple bull rushes or complain because the bureau does not harmonize with the wallpaper. Neither do you criticize the blue and saffron roses that form the rug pattern. Deity not. Instead, you warily punch the mattress to see if it is rock stuffed and you snoop into the clothes closet. You inquire the distance to the nearest bathroom and whether the payments are weekly or monthly and if there is a baby in the room next door. Oh, there's nothing like living in a boarding house for cultivating the materialistic side. But I was to find that here at Knopf's things were quite different. Not only was Ernst von Gerhard right in saying that it was very German and very, very clean, he recognized good copy when he saw it. Types. I never dreamed that such faces existed outside of the old German woodcuts that one sees illustrating time-yellowed books. I had thought myself hardened to strange boarding house dining rooms with their batteries of cold, critical women's eyes. I had learned to walk unruffled in the face of the most carping, suspicious, and the fishiest of these batteries. Therefore on my first day at Knopf's I went down to dinner in the evening, quite composed and secure on the knowledge that my collar was clean and that there was no flaw to find in the fit of my skirt in the back. As I opened the door of my room I heard sounds as of a violent altercation in progress downstairs. I leaned over the balusters and listened. The sounds rose and fell and swelled and boomed. They were German sounds that started in the throat, gutterly, and spluttered their way up. They were sounds such as I had not heard since the night I was sent to cover a socialist meeting in New York. I tiptoed down the stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud without having been heard. The din came from the direction of the dining room. Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all it could not be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the teamsters' strike. I peered into the dining room. The thunder of conversation went on as before but there was no bloodshed. Nothing but men and women sitting at small tables eating and talking. When I say eating and talking I do not mean that those acts were carried on separately. Not at all. The eating and the talking went on simultaneously, neither interrupting the other. A fork full of food and a mouth full of ten syllable German words met, wrestled, and passed one another unscathed. I stood in the doorway, fascinated, until Herr Knopf spied me, took a nimble skip in my direction, twisted the discouraged mustaches into temporary sprightliness, and waved me toward a table in the center of the room. Then a frightful thing happened. When I think of it now I churn cold. The battery was not that of women's eyes but of men's and conversation ceased. The uproar and the booming of vows was hushed. The silence was appalling. I looked up in horror to find that what seemed to be millions of staring blue eyes were fixed on me. The stillness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Such men! Immediately I dubbed them the Aborigines and prayed that I might find adjectives with which to describe their foreheads. It appeared that the Aborigines were especially favored in that they were all placed at one long untidy table at the head of the room. The rest of us sat at small tables. Later I learned that they were all engineers. At meals they discuss engineering problems in the most awe-inspiring German. After supper they smoke impossible German pipes and dozens of cigarettes. They have bulging, knobby foreheads and bristling pompadours and some of the rust of them wear wild-looking beards and thick spectacles and cravats and trousers that Lou Fields never even dreamed of. They are all graduates of high-sounding foreign universities and are horribly learned and brilliant, but they are the worst mannered lot I ever saw. In the silence that followed my entrance a red-cheeked maid approached me and asked what I would have for supper. Supper, I asked, was not dinner served in the evening? The Aborigines nudged each other and sniggered like fiendish little schoolboys. The red-cheeked maid looked at me pityingly. Dinner was served in the middle of the day, naturally. For supper there was Wiener Schnitzel and Kaltter Ofschnitt also Kartoffel Salad and fresh coffee-cooking. The room hung breathless on my decision. I wrestled with a horrible desire to shriek and run. Instead, I managed to mumble an order. The Aborigines turned to one another inquiringly. Vass hat zigazat, they asked. What did she say? Whereupon they felt discussing my hair and teeth and eyes and complexion, and German is crammed with adjectives, as was the rye bread over which I was choking with caraway. The entire table watched me with wide-eyed, unabashed interest while I ate, and I advanced by quick stages from red-faced confusion to purple mirth. It appeared that my presence was the ground for a heavy German joke in connection with the youngest of the Aborigines. He was a very plump and greasy-looking Aborigines with a doll-like rosiness of cheek and a scared and bristling pompadour and very small pig-eyes. The other Aborigines clapped him on the back and roared, I fritz, jetz bracht du niest du weinnen, dyne lina var aber niest zoo hoops eh. Later I learned that fritz was the newest arrival and that since coming to this country he had been rather low in spirits and consequence of a certain flaxen hered lina whom he had left behind in the fatherland. An examination of the dining room and its other occupants served to keep my mind off the hateful long table. The dining room was a double one, the floor carpetless and clean. There was a little platform at one end with hardy-looking plants and pots near the windows. The wall was ornamented with very German pictures of very plump, bare-armed German girls being chucked under the chin by very dashing mustachioed German lieutenants. It was all very bare and strange and foreign to my eyes and yet there was something bright and comfortable about it. I felt that I was going to like it, Aborigines and all. The men drink beer with their supper and read the stats sighting and the Germania and foreign papers that I never heard of. It is uncanny in these United States, but it is going to be bully for my German. After my first letter home Nora wrote frantically, demanding to know if I was the only woman in the house. I calmed her fears by assuring her that while the men were interesting and ugly with the fascinating ugliness of a bulldog, the women were crushed looking and uninteresting and more hopeless hats. I have written Nora and Max reams about this household from the Aborigines to Mina who tidies my room and serves my meals and admires my clothes. Mina is related to Frau Knopf whom I have never seen. Mina is inordinately fond of dress and her remarks annant my own garments are apt to be a trifle disconcerting especially when she intersperses her recital of dinner dishes with admiring adjectives directed at my blouse or hat. Thus there have been roast beef and sparribs mit sauerkraut und schicken Ack Vichon fra arm Aberguntz procht voll her eyes and hands are raised toward heaven. What's procht faul I asked startled the chicken? Nein, your waist zels gemach I'm even becoming hardened to the manners of the Aborigines. It used to fuss me to death to meet one of them in the halls. They always stop short brought heels together with a click bent stiffly from the waist and thundered. Knob in the frau line I have learned to take the salutation quite calmly and even the wildest, most spectacled and knobby browed aborigine cannot startle me. Nonchalantly I reply, nabben, and wish that Nora could but see me in the act. When I told Ernst von Gerhard about them he laughed a little and shrugged his shoulders and said, na, you should not look so young and so pretty and so unmarried. In Germany a married woman brushes her hair quite smoothly back and pins it in a hard knob. And she knows nothing of such bewildering collars and fluffy frilled things in the front of the blouse. How do you call them? Jebos? Von Gerhard has not behaved at all nicely. I did not see him until two weeks after my arrival in Milwaukee although he telephoned twice to ask if there was anything that he could do to make me comfortable. Yes, I had answered the last time that I heard his voice over the telephone. It would be a whole heap of comfort to me just to see you. You are the nearest thing to Nora that there is in this whole German town and goodness knows you are far from Irish. He came. The weather had turned suddenly cold and he was wearing a fur lined coat with a collar of fur. He looked most amazingly handsome and blonde and splendidly healthy. The clasp of his hands was just as big and sure as ever. You have no idea how glad I am to see you, I told him. If you had you would have been here days ago. Aren't you rather ill mannered and neglectful considering that you are responsible for my being here? I did not know whether you, a married woman, would care to have me here, he said in his composed way. In a place like this people are not always kind enough to take the trouble to understand and I would not have them raise their eyebrows at you, not for married, I laughed, some imp of willfulness seizing me. I'm not married. What mockery to say that I am married simply because I must write madam before my name. I am not married and I shall talk to whom I please. And then von Gerhard did a surprising thing. He took two great steps over to my chair and grasped my hands and pulled me to my feet. I stared up at him like a silly creature. His face was suffused with a dull red and his eyes were unbelievably blue and bright. He had my hands and his great grip, but his voice was very quiet and contained. You are married, he said. Never forget that for a moment. You are bound hard and fast and tight and you are for no man. You are married as much as though that poor creature in the madhouse were here working for you instead of the case being reversed as it is. So. What do you mean? I cried, wrenching myself away indignantly. What right have you to talk to me like this? You know what my life has been and how I have tried to smile with my lips and stay young in my heart. I thought you understood. Nor a thought so too and Max. I do understand. I understand so well that I would not have you talk as you did a moment to go. And I said what I said not so much for your sake as for mine. For see, I too must remember that you write Madame before your name and sometimes it is hard for me to remember. Oh. I said like a simpleton and stood staring after him as he quietly gathered up his hat and gloves and left me standing there. End of Chapter 6