"By the way, how is your own book coming on?
I had walked on some distance from the post-office as I read this, for Mr. ----'s chirography was almost undecipherable, even to one accustomed to it. I was just folding the letter to replace it in the envelope, when I heard heavy footsteps hurrying behind me. I turned my head and saw Wilson, quite red in the face with trying to overtake me. "Beg pardon, Miss," he said, touching his hat, "I saw you coming out of the office, and--I'd like to speak to you a minute, if I may."
"What is it?" I asked, somewhat surprised. I stepped back from the path, and Wilson stooped down awkwardly, and picked a twig from a low bush that grew by the fence. "Well," he began, drawing a long breath, "I've been thinking it over, and I've made up my mind to tell you. I expect I ought to have done it before, but my orders was so strict, and--you see I'm saving up to get married, and a man hates to lose a good place,--but that's neither here nor there, Miss, the truth is, I ain't Mr. Longworth's nurse, and I ain't his valley neither. I'm--I'm his attendant."
"Well, what of it?" I said, with some irritation. How could Wilson's absurd distinctions matter to me? What did I care whether he called himself valet, or nurse, or attendant?
To his credit, be it said that there was no tone of half-exultation, almost pardonable after my manner of annoyance, as he went on. His heavy, spatulate finger-tips were stripping the little twig bare of its leaves. As he continued, I fixed my lowered eyes on that bit of alder. I remember every tiny, bright brown knot on it, and how one worm-eaten leaf curled at its edges.
"You see," said Wilson, clumsily, "I mean I was his attendant up to the Retreat. It was a real high-toned place, and they did not take any dangerous ones, only folks like him. His people ain't the kind that stand for price. They've got plenty, and they don't care what they pay. I dare say you've been in his father's store many a time,--Longworth & Whittles, one of the biggest and best dry-goods stores on Sixth avenue. The old gentleman's rolling in gold, and there ain't a nicer lady in New York City than Mrs. Longworth. You see, it was this way. Young Mr. Longworth didn't like business, and they sent him abroad to be educated, and when he come back he just fooled around and went out a good deal, and finally, he got in with some literary folks. One of his friends took him to their receptions, and he got it into his head he was going to be a writer. His folks didn't care, they'd have paid a publisher any price to take his books if it would have done any good; but finally he took to shuttin' himself up in his room day and night, writin' all the time, and it told on him pretty well, for I guess he'd never wrote anything but cheques before. And then he'd burn it up as fast as he wrote, and not eat, and not come out o' that room for days at a time. He kept a-saying it would be all right if it would only fit together but that's just where it is, it don't any of it fit together. And now he just writes over and over the same things he wrote a year ago. He don't know it, he burns 'em up, and then he thinks it's all different. He got so bad the doctors said he'd be better up to Dr. Balsam's Retreat, where they could kind of soothe him down, and make him think his health was out of order, and get his mind off his writing, but he did have a pretty bad fever up there, an' ever since he thinks he was editor or somethin' on some paper, and he can tell it off straight as a string. He's all right about everything else, and if you didn't know about it, you'd think he was just what he says, sure enough."