man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I
had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon as
all that horror was over I must jump right into the tub of cold water,
I kicked, metaphorically speaking. And I've been kicking ever since,
literally to keep from freezing.

But as cruel as freezing is, it doesn't compare to the tortures of being
melted. Jane administers it to me, and her faithful heart is so wrung
with compassion that she perspires almost as much as I do. She wrings a
linen sheet out in a cauldron of hot water and shrouds me in it--and
then more and more blanket windings envelop me until I am like the mummy
of some Egyptian giantess.

Once I got so discouraged at the idea of having all this misery in this
life that I mingled tears with the beads of perspiration that rolled
down my cheeks, and she snatched me out of those steaming wrappings in
less time than it takes to tell it, soused me in a tub of cold water,
fed me with a chicken wing and mashed potatoes, and the information that
I was "good-looking enough for _anybody_ to eat up alive without
all this foolishness," all in a very few seconds. Now I have to beg her
to help me, and I heard her tell her nephew, who does the gardening,
that she felt like an undertaker with such goings-on. At any rate, if it
all kills me it won't be my fault if people tell untruths in saying that
I was "beautiful in death."

But now that more than a month has passed, I really don't mind it so
much. I feel so strong and prancy all the time that I can't keep from
bubbling. I have to smile at myself.

Then another thing that helps is Billy and his ball. I never could