CHAPTER V.

MY DEAR DENEEN: The Labrador trip sounds good to me, and as soon as the book is off my hands, which will be about the time you fellows are ready to start, I reckon I’ll be wid ye. The old spring fever has again seized hold of me, and I’m fairly sweating for a whiff of the open. I wrote you a squib shortly after I arrived, and the ragged kid to whom I gave it to post swears by all that’s unholy--he knows nothing holy--that he posted it, but I suppose it represented too promising spitball material to be wasted on a village post office. This is the worst place to get anything done. Every villager regards himself as an American from “wayback,” and scorns to turn an honest penny by running or walking an errand. But it’s a jolly place to write in. I’m boarding with a queer old couple by the name of Moore, who take summer boarders during July and August, and who, for the convenience of the town folk, have built a bungalow a short distance from the house. It’s quite decently furnished with books and rugs and a fireplace, and my credentials were so good that the Moores have turned it over to me for a workroom. The book I’m at work on is a deliberate attempt to pander to the depraved taste of _hoi polloi_. Yet, I confess it without shame, I’m tremendously interested in it. I find myself reading over and over again parts I’ve written--not with a view to improving them, but because I think they’re so good. Sounds maudlin, doesn’t it? But it’s the gospel truth. And the book is all about a woman! Smoke that in your pipe, old man! I, who have heretofore scorned all feminine frumperies, find myself dissecting frills and analyzing chiffons. Whence cometh this superior knowledge? do I hear you ask with a suspicious leer? Whisper! I have a model, and I’m learning about women from her. Kipling’s idea, you see, but put into respectable and strictly business-like practice. For an hour or so every afternoon she gives me “sittings” in the bungalow. She’s no ordinary paid hireling, mind you, but a fine New York lady, who seems to have accepted the job partly because she desired a new experience, and partly to displease some rich but close-fisted relatives upon whom she’s dependent, but whom she appears to be leading a life. I was tramping about the country one day shortly after I came down here, and while I was having a bite by the roadside, a tailor-made vision with hungry eyes and a wistful air suddenly appeared out of the nowhere and demanded a sandwich. She accepted my invitation to sit down and share what I had, and then she insisted on giving me a lift, and on the way to Rosemount artlessly discussed her deceased husband and her relatives--in short, told me several chapters out of the story of her life. I suppose she’s about the most frivolous specimen of the frivolous sex. Her male admirers are numerous, and some of them trail down from town every day. The morning after she arrived--she came down in a motor car, and it is to a lost bolt that I owe my introduction--I met her out in the car gazing soulfully into the eyes of an elderly party with a clerical collar and an Episcopal air. She told me afterward it was Bishop ----, and informed me quite calmly that he had fled to town to save his immortal soul, his wife being in Europe. Said her relatives were scandalized, a fact that seemed to please her very much. Last night I walked down to the village to get some medicine for my landlord, who had eaten something that disagreed with him and was in a rather bad way. It was as dark as pitch, and I had a lantern. I flashed it as I came around a turn in the road, and found myself face to face with my model and two young men. Each had hold of one of her hands, and each looked idiotically blissful. She seemed the least confused of the bunch, and said “good-evening” quite calmly. I don’t suppose there’s another bundle of such contradictions in the universe. She has all the aplomb of a woman of the world, and all of the _naïveté_ of an unspoiled child. No sort of companion for a man, you understand, but vastly amusing. She speaks of her deceased husband with the most brutal frankness, and makes no pretense of regarding his passing as anything but a happy release for her. For all her apparent spontaneity, I’ve an idea that at heart this model of mine is as hard as rocks. But as I’ve already told you, she’s teaching me a lot, and the book is progressing, and if it’s a success, half the royalties go to her. That is only fair.

Keep me posted about arrangements for your trip. I’m writing now at white heat, and should have the book ready for my publishers within a fortnight. And then, old pal, for Labrador and the open and real, real life.

Yours, JOHN ORMSBY.