Beans, old thing, you alarm me.
Now here is a sporting offer. If you'll drop it and come home at
once I'll promise never to tell Aunt Caroline. Come the moment you
can put foot to the ground. And, until then, I recommend strict
seclusion and no nursing. Nursing might well be fatal. Stick to Li
Ho. He is your only chance.
Your Aunt Caroline sends her love. (I told her I was writing you
directions for further treatment). She feels the deprivation of your
letters keenly. She can't see why the writing of a nice, chatty
letter to one's only living Aunt should prove an undue drain upon
nervous energy. Life has taught her not to expect consideration from
relatives, but it does seem hard that her only sister's boy should
treat her as if she were the scarlet fever. To allow himself to be
ordered away from home for a rest cure was certainly less than
courteous. To anyone not understanding the situation it would almost
imply that his home was not restful. And after all the trouble she
had taken even to the extent of strained relations with those
Macfarland people who own a rooster. If the slight had been aimed
entirely at herself she could have taken it silently, but when it
included the three or four charming girls whom she had asked to
visit (one at a time) for the purpose of providing pleasant company,
she felt obliged to protest. Although protest, she knew, was
useless. All this, however, she could have borne. The thing that she
could scarcely forgive was the slight offered to his native town by
a departure three days before the set date, thereby turning his
"going away" tea into a "gone away"--an action considered by all
(invited) Bainbridge as a personal insult.
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