I know that you can laugh at her threat to make you poor;
but not at hurting her affections. Did your asking for an "answer" mean
that I was to write so openly? Bless you, my own dearest.
LETTER XLVI.
Dearest: To-day I came upon a strange spectacle: poor old Nan-nan weeping
for wounded pride in me. I found her stitching at raiment of needlework
that is to be mine (piles of it have been through her fingers since the
word first went out; for her love asserts that I am to go all home-made
from my old home to my new one--wherever that may be!). And she was
weeping because, as I slowly got to understand, from one particular
quarter too little attention had been paid to me:--the kow-tow of a
ceremonious reception into my new status had not been deep enough to
make amends to her heart for its partial loss of me.
Her deferential recognition of the change which is coming is pathetic
and full of etiquette; it is at once so jealous and so unselfish.
Because her sense of the proprieties will not allow her to do so much
longer, she comes up to my room and makes opportunity to scold me over
quite slight things:--and there I am, meeker under her than I would be
to any relative. So to-day I had to bear a statement of your mother's
infirmities rigorously outlined in a way I could only pretend to be deaf
to until she had done. Then I said, "Nan-nan, go and say your prayers!"
And as she stuck her heels down and refused to go, there I left the poor
thing, not to prayer, I fear, but to desolate weeping, in which love and
pride will get more firmly entangled together than ever.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132