Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/100

 Again Miss Fosdick had an impulse to hurl the brush, this time through the blotched old mirror. Again habit chained her.

"And you needn't sulk, either," added Mrs. Weatherby.

Sulk! Sulk! thought Miss Fosdick. If she only knew what I was thinking. By now Clarence probably owned the drugstore and had a family that might have been her own family. And there was that young organist at Carmel who played in the Bahai Temple and came to call night after night. He might have married her but for something she did. She suspected Aunt Henrietta of telling him that if he married Gertrude neither of them would ever get a cent from her. Maybe he did mean to marry her for Aunt Henrietta's money. "Well," Miss Fosdick thought, "what of it? At least I'd have been married. Something would have happened to me. It would be better than being a fat old maid. Something has got to happen to me! Something! Anything! Anything at all!"

Mrs. Weatherby was speaking again. "I'm afraid I have one of my headaches again. Some enemy is directing ill will toward me."

Again Miss Fosdick made no answer. She knew what the speech meant. In a moment Aunt Henrietta would ask her to sit by the bed all night exerting her will against the currents of malice being projected at Aunt Henrietta by some unknown enemy. If she only knew that on those occasions Miss Fosdick never stayed awake at all but slept roundly sitting upright. Nothing ever kept Aunt Henrietta awake when she felt like sleeping. 