Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse. Faith Sullivan
with a few teacherly corrections, Nell pronounced it fine.
Dear Cora,
Thank you for your letter. I was so happy to receive it. In the post office I let out a squeal as if somebody had stuck me with a hatpin. Everybody turned around to see if I’d been stabbed. I had to explain that it was my first letter from a foreign country.
Even now, just holding the letter in my hands and thinking of the miles and miles it has come, across a whole ocean, makes me want to jump up and down. The stamp is beautiful, and the London postmark sends a shiver right down my back.
Also, the paper, which is the nicest I’ve seen—crisp like a dry leaf—was touched and written on by you, so in a way it’s as if you took my hand to talk to me. See how much pleasure you have given me?
Things are going along smoothly at the store. Four more businesses have ordered telephones and two or three houses also. Anna says if the switchboard gets any busier, she’ll have to grow another arm. But she is tickled. That switchboard makes her feel important. The other day she said, “Someday the whole world is going to be connected by telephone, and here I am, in at the start.”
I wonder. Do you think the whole world should be connected? I can’t make up my mind. I mean, we do have a transatlantic cable, and I suppose that’s handy, but personally I believe people already know too much about each other’s business.
A good example of this is Aunt Martha Stillman. I hope that woman never gets a telephone, because she will be a menace. She was in town shopping last Saturday and she came into the store. I hate to see her coming as she always has a nasty something or other to say about someone.
I was ringing up a box of handkerchiefs and she started telling me about Lucy Shellam, who is the country teacher in Aunt Martha’s township. According to Aunt Martha, Lucy Shellam was seen with a man at a dance in St. Bridget. Not only that, but alcohol was served!
A. M. said she was going to bring the matter to the school board and have Lucy “dispatched.”
“Was Miss Shellam drinking alcohol?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” A. M. said.
“If she wasn’t drinking alcohol, I can’t see how she was doing anything wrong.”
“It isn’t what she did. It’s what she might have done and what people will think she did.”
Are you able to follow that, Cora? I had a hard time.
“Your argument won’t hold up in a court of law,” I told her, “and Lucy’s gentleman will have you in court, you can bet on it. Probably for defamation or something.” I’m not sure what that is exactly, but it sounded scary.
Aunt Martha gave me an evil look, but I could see that she was going to think twice about “dispatching” Lucy Shellam.
I am not Aunt Martha’s favorite relation, but she’s the kind of person whose favorite relation you don’t want to be. (Cora, I couldn’t have gotten myself out of that last sentence without Nell’s help, just in case you’re thinking I’ve been to college since you left.)
I have babbled so much, you’ll have eyestrain if you get to the end of this. To save your poor eyes, I will close, but first I have to tell you that everybody here misses you. You are all the things you said you wanted to be—good, loving, generous, and blithesome, which Nell tells me means cheerful.
With affection,
Elvira Stillman
P.S. Please remember me to George.
chapter fourteenchapter fourteen
CORA WAS STILL IN HER WHEELCHAIR when the young Lundeens returned in late August. Her girlish lightness had fled. Without being self-pitying, she was older, more sober.
“She’s still an invalid. How could she be the same?” Nell pointed out when Aunt Martha spoke of Cora’s “comedown.”
“She’s furnished the Methodist sunday school with expensive toys and books and I don’t know what all.” Martha commenced to fan herself. “Meanwhile, we have to count our pennies to buy a new carpet for the parlor.”
Nell’s patience was thin. “She and Juliet Lundeen have also contributed a beautiful bookcase for the lobby of the new Water and Power Company.”
“What on earth for?”
“So folks can leave books and magazines for others to borrow. I call that bighearted. I’ve already been over there taking advantage.”
Martha set the fan aside and rose with much wheezing and importance. “If you have to buy people’s affection, what’s it worth?”
“Has Cora Lundeen offended you?”
“I don’t approve of people flaunting their money. If I were rich, I wouldn’t throw mine around.”
Nell waited until Martha was down the stairs before she started laughing.
Hilly wouldn’t start school for another year, so Elvira had begun taking him for walks to “build up his stamina.” It was her opinion that school required a good deal of stamina—and that Hilly, because he lived in an apartment, needed his improved.
Besides, the walks fit in with her plan to “buck Cora up.”
One mild late-September day, as she and Hilly marched around the schoolhouse block and then around the park, Elvira said to the boy, “And while we’re at it, we’ll stop at Cora’s to see if she’d like to take the air.” “Take the air” was a phrase Elvira had picked up from one of the English novels she’d grown devoted to.
“I’d love to go,” Cora told her. “We’re going to the park, Lizzie. Get my shawl and Laurence’s sweater. Also the little package on the buffet.”
George had ordered a ramp built onto the porte cochere so that Cora could come and go. Now, while Cora held Laurence on her lap, Lizzie guided the wheelchair down the ramp.
In the park, Cora released Laurence and he tottered away, following Hilly, who was headed toward swings hanging from a pair of maples. On the swing, Hilly held the baby in his lap with one hand and clasped the rope with the other, pushing off gently with his foot. When finally the boys tired of this, Hilly called to Elvira, “Can Laurence come on the teeter-totter?”
“He’s not big enough,” Elvira told him.
“I’ll go with him,” Lizzie said. She showed Laurence how to cling to the grip, then she applied her weight to his end of the teeter-totter, forcing it up and down.
“She’s very willing,” Cora said to Elvira’s silence. She smiled and handed the “little package” to Elvira.
“It’s too pretty to unwrap,” Elvira said, but pulled on the satin ribbons. “Oh, my,” she gasped, lifting the lid and then the contents, a cameo brooch. “Oh, my. I’ve never had anything so beautiful. You shouldn’t have. But I love it!” Tearful, she embraced Cora. “Thank you, thank you. You are so good to me.”
“It is you who are good to me,” Cora said. Then, indicating the face on the brooch, “The silhouette is Queen Victoria. Thank heaven, it’s the young Victoria.”
Pinning the cameo to her breast, Elvira said, “It’ll soon be time to plan the Christmas party.”
Cora shifted in