Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/209

 "You are looking pale," he said another time. "Take a few days off and go to Avondale. It is only two hours from New York, but it's plunged in the profoundest slumber. It's the ideal spot for tired brains and nerves. All around it are hills, which shut out the big bustling world. In it are quaint old-fashioned houses, and men and women not less old-fashioned and equally quaint. Over the peaceful little river that flows through the town are rustic bridges, where you can sit and dream, or fish if you care to (you 'll never catch anything), and look at the willows waving in the summer breeze and the cows standing knee-deep in the clover-fields. The air is full of the perfume of old-fashioned flowers that grow in every garden. You will find bowls of them in your room at night, and the room itself will smell of lavender. Go there, take Lubbock's 'Pleasures of Life' with you,—and forget for forty-eight hours that there is a newspaper in the world."

The letter came to her one hot Friday night in August. The next morning she took the train for Avondale, where she spent two