After emerging from under the billows, i.e.As Written:ie, head above water for 10 minutes! I take this as an especial privilege, and will write you while it lasts.
I need not tell you of the shock I received from Mrs. Gale for I think you have already been given the idea, perhaps from her, but if so it has been a different version from the original. I never can describe in a letter her changed words and manner to me when I first met her.
After I arrived almost tired to death and filled with neuralgiaAs Written:nueralgia in some natural way the conversation turned upon our letters and I remarked as perfectly unconscious As Written: unconscous of any results as an infant could be — even thought it would suit her– that I had concluded to accept her late proposition and give up my long hoped-for home and accept the three hundredEditorial Note: $300.00 in 1868 is the equivalent of $5,467.85 in 2020. she named and take a rent until I could perhaps recover my health sufficiently to earn my house.
I had scarcely finished speaking when she rose with a look almost terriffic and exclaimed what do you mean! I never promised you that! never even thought of such a thing, & I shall never pay you but one, either the three hundred, or the rent; she then, before I replied, went on to ejaculate in almost stifled sentences she seemed so angry — that she had no reason to believe I was sick on account of what I did for her, intimated that I made my sickness and said Eliza saw no proof of it et ceteraAs Written:&c et ceteraAs Written:&c, and added – "I have not the slightest evidence that you healed me"! Sarah I could not reply for a moment I could only swallow back my emotion and tears. I was not in the least angry, I was too much grieved for that, with such a bitter sense of the wrong she did me and I saw that I was completely deceived in all her protestations of love, duty, and such stuff in the past. When I could speak and her storm had subsided I referred As Written: refered to those and then required her to tell me what had so changed her?— but all I said, or argued, and explained, seemed as lost upon her as upon a mad child or a cornered miser money was the first motive and next— the intrigue As Written: intrgue and lies of Capt. WebsterEditorial Note: Nathaniel Webster & co. and the artful jealous Eliza do you remember the jealous card and how it left at last She has no need of it now for she has with the WebstersEditorial Note: Nathaniel Webster and Mary B. Webster accomplished on the weak women all they desire
Mrs. Gale saw the sufferings it gave me with as unpitying As Written: unpyting a look as an executioner As Written: excutioner could have.
[*]Archival Note: There is a broken horizontal line drawn across the page here.
I am with my dear friends Mr. &- Mrs WentworthEditorial Note: Alanson C. Wentworth and Sally T. Wentworth, They were overjoyed to see me. It storms, but Celia has taken me out to ride in the intervals As Written: intevals of rain I will tell you when I see you what Mrs. G. leaked out of what the WebstersEditorial Note: Nathaniel Webster and Mary B. Webster had said but after all occurred As Written: ocurred to me she knew I was above all reproach in my character but that I was only after her money et ceteraAs Written:&c et ceteraAs Written:&c (as they had made her think but the truth is, she is perfectly well as strong and hardy as an Irish woman Eliza said she could endure now more than even she could and so she thinks she has no farther need of me and all she has to look out for now is to get rid of paying me for risking my life to make her thus
O I am tired! tired! When will my rest com[*]Gap: letter.Reason: page cut off. Love to dear Grandma & also Dick
Write me here and keep carefully all Mrs. G's letters do not betray me in love or I shall go mad