文档介绍：DAWN O'HARA THE GIRL WHO LAUGHED
DAWN O'HARA THE
GIRL WHO LAUGHED
by EDNA FERBER
TO MY DEAR MOTHER WHO FREQUENTLY INTERRUPTS
AND TO MY SISTER FANNIE WHO SAYS "SH-SH-SH!"
OUTSIDE MY DOOR
1
DAWN O'HARA THE GIRL WHO LAUGHED
CHAPTER I
THE SMASH-UP
There are a number of things that are pleasanter than being sick in a
New York boarding-house when one's nearest dearest is a married sister up
in far-away Michigan.
Some one must have been very kind, for there were doctors, and a
blue-and-white striped nurse, and bottles and things. There was even a
vase of perky carnations-- scarlet ones. I discovered that they had a trick
of nodding their heads, saucily. The discovery did not appear to surprise
me.
"Howdy-do!" said I aloud to the fattest and reddest carnation that
overtopped all the rest. "How in the world did you get in here?"
The striped nurse (I hadn't noticed her before) rose from some corner
and came swiftly over to my bedside, taking my wrist between her fingers.
"I'm very well, thank you," she said, smiling, "and I came in at the
door, of course."
"I wasn't talking to you," I snapped, crossly, "I was speaking to the
carnations; particularly to that elderly one at the top--the fat one who
keeps bowing and wagging his head at me."
"Oh, yes," answered the striped nurse, politely, "of course. That one
is very lively, isn't he? But suppose we take them out for a little while
now."
She picked up the vase and carried it into the corridor, and the
carnations nodded their heads more vigorously than ever over her
shoulder.
I heard her call softly to some one. The some one answered with a
sharp little cry that sounded like, "Conscious!"
The next moment my own sister Norah came quietly into the room,
and knelt at the side of my bed and took me in her arms. It did not seem
at all surprising that she should be there, patting me with reassuring little
love pats, murmuring over me with her lips against my check, calling me a