The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

								


THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR DISCOVERS AMERICA

I
THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON (NÉE MOLLY
RANDOLPH) TO HER FRIEND, THE
COUNTESS OF LANE



                                       On Board SS. Evangeline,

                                                        March 15th.
DEAREST MERCÉDES:
It will be days, also nights (worse luck, for my cabin chirps like a
cricket, sings like a canary, and does a separate realistic imitation of
each animal in the Zoo!), before we get to New York. But I have crochet
cramp and worsted wrist from finishing a million scarfs since we sailed,
so I feel it will ease the strain to begin a letter to you. I dare say,
anyhow, I shan't close it till the last minute, with a P. S. to say
we're arriving safely--if we do! One never knows nowadays. And we have
on board a man who's been torpedoed twice. I hope he isn't the kind to
whom everything happens in threes. By the way, he's the Ship's Mystery,
and this letter can't be a complete record of the voyage unless I tell
you about him. Place aux dames, however. There's a girl I want to tell
you about first. Or had I better polish off our own family history and
make a clean sweep of ourselves before beginning on anybody else? On
second thoughts, I will!
Jack's getting better splendidly. I can't say he's getting well, for
that will take a long time yet, I'm sorry to--but no, to be an Honest
Injun, I'm not sorry. I'm glad--glad! He's done his "bit"--quite a
large bit--for his country, and if his bones and muscles were knitting
as rapidly as I knit socks for soldiers, he would insist on rushing back
to do another bit. Of course he wouldn't have consented to come over
here, even for the three months I've made him (figuratively speaking)
"sign on for," if the doctors hadn't all said he'd be a crock for
months. Even he has to admit that he may as well crock in America as
anywhere else; and I've persuaded him that I can't possibly decide what
to do with the place Cousin John Randolph Payton left me on Long Island
without his expert advice. It may be the first time I was ever unable to
decide a thing by myself, but there must be a first time, you know.
And I'm simply purring with joy to have Jack at my mercy like this,
after all I went through with him at the front. We shall celebrate a
wedding day presently. Ten years married, and I adore Jack just ten
times more than I did the day I exchanged a Lightning Conductor for a
husband.
He does look too interesting since he was wounded! All the girls gaze
at him as if he were a matinee idol or a moving-picture star, and
naturally they don't think I'm worthy of him in the least--an opinion in
which I agree. Luckily, he doesn't. I believe he admires me as much as
I do him. And really, I'm not so bad to look at, I notice, now I've
begun to live again and don't need to worry over Jack every instant. I
had feared it might be necessary to own up to twenty-nine, only two
years short of my real age, which would be so wasteful. But thank