I hate that people should rot and die. I feel
personally affronted when I think about your father, and some days--I
strongly suspect it's when my liver's out of order--I worry about your
young son. But by the time he's grown up maybe Kraill's socialization of
knowledge will have begun."
Marcella was having an argument with Mrs. Beeton that day when Jerry
brought the letter in. Mrs. Beeton seemed to think it was necessary to
have an oven, a pastry board, a roller and various ingredients before
one could attempt jam tarts. Marcella felt that a mixture of flour,
fruit salt, and water baked in the clay oven heaped over with blazing
wood ought to beat Mrs. Beeton at her own game. She and young Andrew,
both covered in flour because he loved to smack his hands in it and
watch it rise round them in curly white clouds were watching beside the
fire for the sticks to burn down. When she read the doctor's letter she
sat down immediately to write to him. She knew so well that sense of
inadequacy that trying to help Louis always gave her, and she wanted to
cure him of it. The jam tarts got burned; she forgot about them. It was
only when she remembered that the letter could not go to the post for
three days that she decided to write it again at greater leisure.
The two years had aged Marcella; the doctor's letters were manna in the
desert to her spirit, his books the only paths out of the hard, tough
life of everyday.
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