Dawn OHara, The Girl Who Laughed | Page 8

coat-tails, all three quite unmindful of
the rain, and yelling like Comanches.

Ten minutes later he had donned his professional dignity, entered my
room, and beheld me in all my limp and pea-green beauty. I noted
approvingly that he had to stoop a bit as he entered the low doorway,
and that the Vandyke of my prophecy was missing.
He took my hand in his own steady, reassuring clasp. Then he began to
talk. Half an hour sped away while we discussed New
York--books--music--theatres--everything and anything but Dawn
O'Hara. I learned later that as we chatted he was getting his story, bit by
bit, from every twitch of the eyelids, from every gesture of the hands
that had grown too thin to wear the hateful ring; from every motion of
the lips; from the color of my nails; from each convulsive muscle; from
every shadow, and wrinkle and curve and line of my face.
Suddenly he asked: "Are you making the proper effort to get well? You
try to conquer those jumping nerfs, yes?"
I glared at him. "Try! I do everything. I'd eat woolly worms if I thought
they might benefit me. If ever a girl has minded her big sister and her
doctor, that girl is I. I've eaten everything from pate de foie gras to raw
beef, and I've drunk everything from blood to champagne."
"Eggs? " queried Von Gerhard, as though making a happy suggestion.
"Eggs!" I snorted. "Eggs! Thousands of 'em! Eggs hard and soft boiled,
poached and fried, scrambled and shirred, eggs in beer and egg-noggs,
egg lemonades and egg orangeades, eggs in wine and eggs in milk, and
eggs au naturel. I've lapped up iron-and-wine, and whole rivers of milk,
and I've devoured rare porterhouse and roast beef day after day for
weeks. So! Eggs!"
"Mein Himmel!" ejaculated he, fervently, "And you still live!" A
suspicion of a smile dawned in his eyes. I wondered if he ever laughed.
I would experiment.
"Don't breathe it to a soul," I whispered, tragically, "but eggs, and eggs
alone, are turning my love for my sister into bitterest hate. She stalks
me the whole day long, forcing egg mixtures down my unwilling throat.

She bullies me. I daren't put out my hand suddenly without knocking
over liquid refreshment in some form, but certainly with an egg lurking
in its depths. I am so expert that I can tell an egg orangeade from an
egg lemonade at a distance of twenty yards, with my left hand tied
behind me,and one eye shut, and my feet in a sack."
"You can laugh, eh? Well, that iss good," commented the grave and
unsmiling one.
"Sure," answered I, made more flippant by his solemnity. "Surely I can
laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense
of humor was like a shillaly--an iligent thing to have around handy,
especially when the joke's on you."
The ghost of a twinkle appeared again in the corners of the German
blue eyes. Some fiend of rudeness seized me.
"Laugh!" I commanded.
Dr. Ernst von Gerhard stiffened. "Pardon?" inquired he, as one who is
sure that he has misunderstood.
"Laugh!" I snapped again. "I'll dare you to do it. I'll double dare you!
You dassen't!"
But he did. After a moment's bewildered surprise he threw back his
handsome blond head and gave vent to a great, deep infectious roar of
mirth that brought the Spalpeens tumbling up the stairs in defiance of
their mother's strict instructions.
After that we got along beautifully. He turned out to be quite human,
beneath the outer crust of reserve. He continued his examination only
after bribing the Spalpeens shamefully, so that even their rapacious
demands were satisfied, and they trotted off contentedly.
There followed a process which reduced me to a giggling heap but
which Von Gerhard carried out ceremoniously. It consisted of certain
raps at my knees, and shins, and elbows, and fingers, and certain

commands to--"look at my finger! Look at the wall! Look at my finger!
Look at the wall!"
"So!" said Von Gerhard at last, in a tone of finality. I sank my battered
frame into the nearest chair. "This--this newspaper work--it must
cease." He dismissed it with a wave of the hand.
"Certainly," I said, with elaborate sarcasm. "How should you advise me
to earn my living in the future? In the stories they paint dinner cards,
don't they? or bake angel cakes?"
"Are you then never serious?" asked Von Gerhard, in disapproval.
"Never," said I. "An old, worn-out, worked-out newspaper reporter,
with a husband in the mad-house, can't afford to be serious for a minute,
because if she were she'd go mad, too, with the hopelessness of it all."
And I buried my face in my hands.
The room