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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"From Mine Own People"

You've been here too long.
I'll get up. Hi! This is annoying. I can't dress myself. Oh, it's too absurd!"
Torpenhow helped him into his clothes and led him to the big chair in the
studio. He sat quietly waiting under strained nerves for the darkness to lift.
It did not lift that day, nor the next. Dick adventured on a voyage round the
walls. He hit his shins against the stove, and this suggested to him that it
would be better to crawl on all fours, one hand in front of him. Torpenhow
found him on the floor.
"I'm trying to get the geography of my new possessions," said he. "D"you
remember that nigger you gouged in the square? Pity you didn't keep the odd
eye. It would have been useful. Any letters for me? Give me all the ones in fat
gray envelopes with a sort of crown thing outside. They're of no importance."
Torpenhow gave him a letter with a black M. on the envelope flap. Dick put it
into his pocket. There was nothing in it that Torpenhow might not have read,
but it belonged to himself and to Maisie, who would never belong to him.
"When she finds that I don't write, she'll stop writing. It's better so. I
couldn't be any use to her now," Dick argued, and the tempter suggested that he
should make known his condition.


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