* * * * *

I sit here waiting for my mortal enemy. Will he come gliding in
imperceptibly or stand suddenly before me? Will he overcome me, or
shall I prove the stronger? I am prepared--but is that sufficient?

Torp is really too romantic! To-day it pleased her to decorate the table
with Virginia creeper. Virginia creeper festooned the hanging lamp;
Virginia creeper crept over the cloth. Even the joint was decked out
with wine-red leaves, until it looked like a ship flying all her flags
on the King's birthday. Amid all this pomp and ceremony, I sat all
alone, without a human being for whom I might have made myself smart. I,
who for the last twenty years, have never even dressed the salad without
at least one pair of eyes watching me toss the lettuce as though I was
performing some wonderful Indian conjuring trick.

A festal board at which one sits in solitary grandeur is the dreariest
thing imaginable.

I rather wish Torp had less "style," as she calls it. Undoubtedly she
has lived in large establishments and has picked up some habits and
customs from each of them. She is welcome to wait at table in white
cotton gloves and to perch a huge silk bow on her hair, which is
redolent of the kitchen, but when it comes to trimming her poor
work-worn nails to the fashionable pyramidal shape--she really becomes
tragic.

She "romanticises" everything. I should not be at all surprised if some
day she decked her kitchen range with wreaths of roses and hung up works