Читать книгу Fresh Leaves - Fern Fanny - Страница 21

Now I am in for it, with one of my unappeasable headaches. Don’t talk to me of doctors; it is incurable as a love-fit; nothing on earth will stop it; you may put that down in your memorandum-book. Now, I suppose every body in the house to-day will put on their creakingest shoes; and every body will go up and down stairs humming all the tunes they ever heard, especially those I most dislike; and I suppose every thing that is cooked in the kitchen will boil and stew over, and the odor will come up to me; and I have such a nose! And I suppose all the little boys in the neighborhood, bless their little restless souls, will play duets on tin-pans and tin-kettles; and I suppose every body who comes into my room to ask me how I do, will squeak that horrid door, and keep squeaking it; and I suppose that unhappy dog confined over in that four-square-feet yard, will howl more deliriously than ever; and Mr. Jones’s obnoxious blind will flap and bang till I am as crazy as an omnibus-driver who has a baulky horse, and whose passengers are hopping out behind without paying their fare; and I suppose some poor little child will be running under the window every now and then, screaming “Mother,” and whenever I hear that, I think somebody wants me; and I’ve no doubt there will be “proof” to read to-day, and that that pertinacious and stentorian rag-man will lumber past on his crazy old cart, and insist on having some of my dry goods; and I feel it in my bones that oysters and oranges, and tape, and blacking, and brooms, and mats, and tin-ware, will settle and congregate on this side-walk, and assert their respective claims to my notice, till the sight of an undertaker would be a positive blessing.

Whack! how my head snaps! Don’t tell me any living woman ever had such a headache before – because it will fill me with disgust. What o’clock is it? “Twelve.” Merciful man! only twelve o’clock! I thought it was five. How am I to get through the day, I would like to know, for this headache won’t let up till sundown; it never does. “Read to me.” What’ll you read? “Tom Moore!” as if I were not sick enough already! Moore! with his nightingales, and bulbuls, and jessamines; and loves and doves, and roses and poesies – till the introduction of an uneducated wildcat, or the tearingest kind of a hyena in his everlasting gardens, would be an untold relief. No – I hate Moore. Beside – he is the fellow who said, “When away from the lips that we love, we’ll make love to the lips that are near.” No wonder he was baptized more