L. George....
She made us welcome at her home. We formed a pleasant group together,
the occupants of my little cottage back in the pines, and she, her
valitudinarian husband, and her four daughters, the eldest of whom,
Editha, was of an exquisite type of frail, fair beauty ... all her
daughters had inherited their mother's keen-mindedness ... she had
brought them up on the best in the thought, art, and literature of the
world....
The relationship between mother and daughters was one more of
delightful, understanding comradeship than anything else ... in spite of
the fact of Mrs. Rond's over-developed maternal instincts ... a
favourite trick of the two youngest daughters being to hide away
upstairs and then call out in mock tones of agony, in order to enjoy the
sight of their mother, running breathless, up from the kitchen or in
from the yard, and up the stairs, pale with premonition of some
accident or ill, and crying, "what's the matter? children, what's the
matter?"
"Oh, nothing, mother ... we're only playing."
And her relief would be so great that she would forget to scold them for
their childlike, unthinking cruelty.
* * * * *
Just before I had left Kansas to come East on my projected trip to
Europe, the magazines had begun to buy my poems, the best of them--Now
every poem of mine was sent hurriedly back with an accompanying
rejection slip.
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