Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story

Chapter 156: CXXXIII Hazel Barrance to Nesta Rossiter

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About This Book

Presented as a sequence of letters, the work follows the responses of friends and relatives when a woman at her country home sustains a spinal injury and must remain flat for a long recovery. Correspondence records medical opinions, practical arrangements for nursing and household care, visitors and neighborhood support, and small domestic consolations such as reading aloud, recorded music, and an adapted form of solitaire. Through exchanges of news, requests, and observations, the letters map family connections and local characters while illustrating how community, resourcefulness, and affectionate concern reshape daily life during enforced convalescence.

CXXXIII
Hazel Barrance to Nesta Rossiter

You simpleton, thinking you can get a nurse in Peace-time. There isn’t such a thing in the world—not under £50 a year. How silly we all were not to take a leaf out of the Darlings’ book and train Newfoundland dogs!—only they would have to be muzzled to-day. If I were you I should let your Emily have her way—it’s only for a few weeks—and make Fred do more. Surely if the children want anything in the night, he could get it.—Yours always,

Hazel

P.S.—Father is rejoicing in a séance story which was told him at the Club. Communication was at last set up with the spirit of an old Ceylon judge whose life had been by no means one of restraint. All that he would say to the medium was, “I’m a dashed sight more comfortable than I ever expected to be.”