“Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. I am going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the depot there. There is cold mutton in the ice box. I hope it isn’t her quinzy again. Pay the milkman 60 cents. She had it bad last spring. Don’t forget to write to the company about the gas meter, and your good socks are in the top drawer. I will write to-morrow.
Hastily,
KATY.”
Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a dumfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never varied, and it left him dazed.
There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butterscotch lay with its string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart.
He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could.
[45]
