_Half the time she doesn't have a servant, and all the time she has a
mother-in-law, who is pie crust, and Miss Lou Barbee, who's a bagpipe,
and with the doors locked and windows shut so no one can see, she has
worked herself to death. What I want done is to have an invitation
sent her from an old friend to be the guest of the hospital here for a
month, and you will be the friend and she will never know it. Miss
Polk, the superintendent of the hospital, will manage things. I've
talked it over with her, and she understands. Miss Polk is a perfectly
grand person. For Simon-pure sense there isn't her equal on earth.
She and I have decided on what we would do if we had money. We'd have
a Fund for Tired Mothers and Fathers. It would be used to give them a
Rest before Death._

_I hope you won't mind sending the money. I don't think you will, for
everybody says business is so prosperous it's actually unrighteous, and
it's in the Bible that you ought to put your treasures where you can
find them again, or something like that. If you can't send it I know
there will be a good reason for your not sending it, but I would like
to have it by Monday if possible, so Mrs. Stafford can go to the
Hospital the next day. Later, four other people can have their turn.
It is to be used not for illness, but for Tiredness; for broken-downers
and worn-outers who need being waited on and fed up and allowed to keep
still. Miss Polk and I are going to decide on who needs a rest the
most before I go away, and I send you for it, Father dear, an armful of
squeezes and the biggest bunch of kisses the mail-man can take._

That was all I told him about the Rest money, but I said a little
something about the picnic I thought I ought to give. Everybody in
town has given something, and, having accepted, I have to return, and
the picnic will be the best thing for Whythe and Elizabeth. I didn't
mention the ex-lovers to Father, of course. Even to a father one
doesn't have to tell everything in life.

CHAPTER XXI

I haven't seen Whythe alone but once since the night of the MacLean
party, and then I stopped any tendencies that showed signs of being
personal, and talked most of the time about the picnic which we can't
have until late in the month. Every day is engaged up to the
twenty-fourth. Whythe tried to talk of Mr. Algernon Grice Baker, but I
cut that out also. Sarcasm doesn't suit him, and some day he might be
sorry. The Super