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Verena in the Midst: A Kind of a Story

Chapter 180: CLVII Sinclair Ferguson to Verena Raby
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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.

CLVII
Sinclair Ferguson to Verena Raby

Dear Miss Raby,—I rejoiced to have Mr. Field’s very favourable report—surprisingly favourable—even though it reflects a little on my own want of intuition and skill. But I will not develop that theme, for I too was once young and cleverer than my elders, and yesterday I caught a twenty-one lb. salmon and the divine glow still warms me and makes me tolerant to all men. Seriously, my dear friend, this news of your sudden improvement has relieved me profoundly, for it has been a constant grief to me to see you so helpless and to be able to do so little.

It is as Field’s locum, so far as your own case is concerned, that I shall consider myself when I return, which will be in about three weeks. I wonder if he has left me anything in the place to do? I quite expect to find that old Withers has grown another leg.—I am, yours sincerely,

Sinclair Ferguson