Dawn OHara, The Girl Who Laughed | Page 6

man-fashion. Peter Orme raised his head and stared at him, and the man
sprang back in terror. The smoldering eyes had burned down to an ash.
Peter Orme 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 a nasty
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. Did I think that I still could write those amusing little
human interest stories? Funny ones, you know, with a punch in 'em.
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 Norah, and ground out very funny stories with a punch in 'em,
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 tiptoed in and looked her disapproval at
finding me sleepless.
"Dawn, old girlie, 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! Dawn 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,
ohone, and twice as fat. Home, Dawnie 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 peace descended upon my sick soul. "Home--with you," I said,
like a child, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER II
MOSTLY EGGS
Oh, but it was clean, and sweet, and wonderfully still, that
rose-and-white room at Norah's! No street cars to tear at one's nerves
with grinding brakes and clanging bells; no tramping of restless feet on
the concrete all through the long, noisy hours; no shrieking midnight
joy-riders; not one of the hundred sounds which make night hideous in
the city. What bliss to lie there, hour after hour, in a delicious
half-waking, half-sleeping, wholly exquisite stupor, only rousing
myself to swallow egg-nogg No. 426, and then to flop back again on
the big, cool pillow!
New York, with its lights, its clangor, its millions, was only a far-away,
jumbled nightmare. The office, with its clacking typewriters, its
insistent, nerve-racking telephone bells, its systematic rush, its
smoke-dimmed 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 Norah's! Why, they were white,

instead of gray! And they actually smelled of flowers. For that matter,
there were rosebuds on the silken coverlet. It took me a week to get
chummy with that rosebud-and-down quilt. I had to explain carefully to
Norah 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 Norah 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 Norah, 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 'em last--"
You cat!" exclaimed Norah, 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