'
"By sheer force of her strong, cheery personality, she calmed Tim
after awhile, and had her laughing like the gayest of us. Nobody but
Elsie could have done it.
"When Miss Hill made an excuse to come in a little after nine o'clock,
we were eating apples and telling riddles as demurely as Quaker
ladies."
[Illustration: "'SHE HID HER FACE ON MY SHOULDER'"]
When Olive had finished reading this letter aloud, she had to read
several more before she came to another mentioning the subject in
which she and Sara were most interested; and after that there were
only occasional paragraphs scattered here and there among pages of
personal news and school happenings.
"I am afraid that Timoroso is going to be ill," wrote Sophia, in one
of those gossipy epistles. "She is as white and listless as a tired
little ghost. She has slept scarcely any since our palmistry evening,
but I did not discover the fact until last night. I woke suddenly to
find her standing by the window in the moonlight, with a blanket
thrown round her. She was catching her breath in long, choking sobs,
and wringing her hands in the greatest distress. The idea that she
must sometime take her own life haunts her night and day. I found that
she had been brooding over it, taking a morbid interest in all the
sensational reports of suicides that she can find in the papers, and
that she has been rereading Cleopatra's experiments with poisons.
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