Janet, in Scotland,
perceived half of this, and felt aggrieved on the score
of the other half. She wished, more often than she said
she did, that Elfrida were a little more human, that she
had a more appreciative understanding of the warm value
of common every-day matters between people who were
interested in one another. The subtle imprisoned soul in
Elfrida's letters always spoke to hers, but Janet never
received so artistic a missive of three lines that she
did not wish it were longer, and she had no fund of
confidence to draw on to meet her friend's incomprehensible
spaces of silence. To cover her real soreness she scolded,
chaffed brusquely, affected lofty sarcasms.
"Twelve days ago," she wrote, "you mentioned casually
that you were threatened with pneumonia; your communication
of to-day you devote to proving that Hector Malot is a
carpenter. I agree with you with reservations, but the
sequence worries me. In the meantime have you had the
pneumonia?"
Her own letters were long and gossiping, full of the
scent of the heather and the eccentricities of Donald
Macleod; and she wrote them, regularly twice a week,
using rainy afternoons for the purpose and every inch of
the paper at her disposal.
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