The Sick-a-Bed Lady

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THE SICK-A-BED LADY

[Illustration: "That will help you remember where your mouth is"]

THE SICK-A-BED LADY

And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business

by

ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT

Author of "Molly Make-Believe"

Illustrated

New York The Century Co. 1911

Copyright, 1911, by The Century Co.

Copyright, 1905, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son Copyright, 1905, by J. B. Lippincott Company Copyright, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, by The Ridgway Company Copyright, 1910, by The Success Company

Published, October, 1911

TO THE MEMORY OF TWO FATHERS

CONTENTS

PAGE THE SICK-A-BED LADY 3 HICKORY DOCK 33 THE VERY TIRED GIRL 57 THE HAPPY-DAY 89 THE RUNAWAY ROAD 127 SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER 161 THE AMATEUR LOVER 195 HEART OF THE CITY 253 THE PINK SASH 291 WOMAN'S ONLY BUSINESS 331

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"That will help you remember where your mouth is" Frontispiece FACING PAGE With no other object, except to get home 58 The blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all 96 Instinctively she clasped it to her 146 The four of us who remained huddled very close around the fire 164 "Hello, all you animals!" she cried 244 The lone, accentuated figure of a boy violinist 256 "Is--a--pink--sash--exactly a--a--passion?" 298 "Oh, I wish I had a sister," fretted the boy 364

THE SICK-A-BED LADY

THE Sick-A-Bed Lady lived in a huge old-fashioned mahogany bedstead, with solid silk sheets, and three great squashy silk pillows edged with fluffy ruffles. On a table beside the Sick-A-Bed Lady was a tiny little, shiny little bell that tinkled exactly like silver raindrops on a golden roof, and all around this Lady and this Bedstead and this Bell was a big, square, shadowy room with a smutty fireplace, four small paned windows, and a chintzy wall-paper showered profusely with high-handled baskets of lavender flowers over which strange green birds hovered languidly.

* * * * *

The Sick-A-Bed Lady, herself, was as old as twenty, but she did not look more than fifteen with her little wistful white face against the creamy pillows and her soft brown hair braided in two thick pigtails and tied with great pink bows behind each ear.

When the Sick-A-Bed Lady felt like sitting up high against her pillows, she could look out across the footboard through her opposite window. Now through that opposite window was a marvelous vista--an old-fashioned garden, millions of miles of ocean, and then--France! And when the wind was in just the right direction there was a perfectly wonderful smell to be smelled--part of it was Cinnamon Pink and part of it was Salt-Sea-Weed, but most of it, of course, was--France. There were days and days, too, when any one with sense could feel that the waves beat perkily against the shore with a very strong French accent, and that all one's French verbs, particularly "J'aime, Tu aimes, Il aime," were coming home to rest. What else was there to think about in bed but funny things like that?