Without the
malarial husband I should have asked for no better secretary; but he
spoiled everything. He was like a raw oyster in a cup of tea.
I could not drive from my mind the vision of that man even when I knew
he was asleep in his bed. There was no way of throwing him off. His wife
had expressed to my grandmother the delight she felt in having him in
the room with her while she worked, and my grandmother had spoken to me
of her own sympathetic pleasure in this arrangement. I saw it would be
impossible to exile him again to the apple-tree, even if the ground
should ever be dry enough. There was no hope that he would be left at
his home; there was no hope that he would get better, and go off to
attend to his own business; there was no hope that he would die.
From dictating but little I fell to dictating almost nothing at all. To
keep my secretary at work, I gave her some notes of travel of which to
make a fair copy, while I occupied myself in wondering what I was going
to do about that malarial husband.
At last I ceased to wonder, and I did something. I went to the city,
and, after a day's hard work, I secured a position for my secretary in a
large publishing establishment, where her husband could sit by a window
in a secluded corner, and keep as quiet as a mouse.
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