The morning was as dark and cold as city snow could make it--a dingy
whirl at the window; a smoky gust through the fireplace; a shadow
black as a bear's cave under the table. Nothing in all the cavernous
room, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water,
and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit.

Packed into his pudgy pillows like a fragile piece of china instead of
a human being Carl Stanton lay and cursed the brutal Northern winter.

Between his sturdy, restive shoulders the rheumatism snarled and
clawed like some utterly frenzied animal trying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its
way out. Along the tortured hollow of his back a red-hot plaster fumed
and mulled and sucked at the pain like a hideously poisoned fang
trying to gnaw-gnaw-gnaw its way in. Worse than this; every four or
five minutes an agony as miserably comic as a crashing blow on one's
crazy bone went jarring and shuddering through his whole abnormally
vibrant system.

In Stanton's swollen fingers Cornelia's large, crisp letter rustled
not softly like a lady's skirts but bleakly as an ice-storm in
December woods.

Cornelia's whole angular handwriting, in fact, was not at all unlike a
thicket of twigs stripped from root to branch of every possible
softening leaf.

"DEAR CARL" crackled the letter, "In spite of your
unpleasant tantrum yesterday, because I would not kiss you
good-by in the presence of my mother, I am good-natured