Explore "The House of Martha" by Frank R. Stockton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The next day my amanuensis bade me good-morning in her former pleasant manner, but without turning toward me seated herself quickly at the table, and took the manuscript from the drawer. "Oh, ho! " I thought, "then you can speak; and it was not the rules which made you behave in that way, but your own pique, which has worn off a little. " I glanced at her as she intently looked over the work of the day before, and I was considering whether or not it would be fitting for me to show that there might be pique on one side of the grating as well as on the other, when suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by a burst of laughter, -- girlish, irrepressible laughter. With the manuscript in her hands, my nun actually leaned back in her chair and laughed so heartily that I wonder my grandmother did not hear her.
"I declare," she said, turning to me, her eyes glistening with tears of merriment, "this is the funniest thing I ever saw. Why, you have actually separated those poor lovers for life, and crushed every hope in the properest way. And then all the rest about commerce! I wouldn't have believed you could do it."