'"
Well-meaning Lady of the Bluffs, I'm really acquiring a sort of affection
for her in spite of her crudity. If all the Whirlpoolers were like her,
the pool might be a noisy torrent, but never a dangerous one.
* * * * *
This is Lavinia Dorman's last day with me, and I know she is really sorry
to go, in spite of a sort of pleasurable responsibility and excitement
she feels in managing Sylvia's affairs for a time.
She waked up with a bad headache--a rare thing for her--and after
breakfast seemed so forlorn and blue that I coaxed her into my room and
petted her for a while, almost as I would one of the children; and as she
no longer conceals the fact of the false front from me, I took it off,
brushed and brushed her lovely hair until it grew supple and alive, and
began to glisten, and the pain gradually slipped through it into the air;
then I drew it up cushionwise from her forehead and coiled it loosely on
top, and she, declaring that my fingers had a magic touch, spent the rest
of the morning at my desk in writing letters.
The lovable woman who has no one specially to love her is a common
tragedy of everyday life. Strangely enough it more often draws
ridicule than sympathy, and it seems to be always considered the
woman's own fault, instead of a combination of circumstances, woven
often of self-sacrifice, mistaken duty, and the studied suppression of
natural emotions.
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