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Lincoln, Joseph Crosby, 1870-1944

"Galusha the Magnificent"

What the Cabot,
Bancroft and Cabot folks said wasn't any too definite; when I sit right
down and think about it I realize it wasn't. But it was encouraging,
real encouraging. And that bit of real encouragement has made me over,
like an old dress. Which reminds me that I've got to be makin' over some
of MY old dresses pretty soon, or summer'll be here and I won't have
a thing fit to wear. I declare," she added, with a laugh, "this is the
first time I've even thought about clothes since last fall. And when a
woman forgets to be interested in dressmakin' she's pretty far gone....
Why, what makes you look so sorrowful? Is anything wrong?"
Galusha replied that nothing whatever was wrong; there was, he said, no
reason in the world why he should appear sorrowful. Yet, this answer
was not the exact truth; there were reasons, and speeches such as Miss
Martha's reminded him of them. They awoke his uneasy conscience to the
fear that the encouragement she found in his report from Cabot, Bancroft
and Cabot was almost entirely due to his interpretation of that report
and not to the facts behind it. However, as she must on no account
guess this to be the case, he smiled and assumed an air more than ever
carefree.
One afternoon, when, on his way home after an unusually lengthy walk, he
stopped at the post office, he found that the Phipps' mail had already
been delivered.


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