Ida a Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

enough. Anybody could.
    Somebody came and asked her where Arthur was. She said, Arthur was gone.
    Pretty soon she was gone and when she was gone nobody knew what to say.
    They did not know she was gone but she was.
    They wanted to read about her but as there was nothing written about her they could not read about her. So they just waited.
    Ida went to live with a cousin of her uncle.
    He was an old man and he could gild picture frames so that they looked as if they had always had gold on them. He was a good man that old man and he had a son, he sometimes thought that he had two sons but anyway he had one and that one had a garage and he made a lot of money. He had a partner and they stole from one another. One day the son of the old man was so angry because the partner was most successful in getting the most that he up and shot him. They arrested him. They put him in jail. They condemned him to twenty years hard labor because the partner whom he had killed had a wife and three children. The man who killed the other one had no children that is to say his wife had one but it was not his. Anyway there it was. His mother spent all her time in church praying that her son’s soul should be saved. The wife of their doctor said it was all the father and mother’s fault, they had brought up their son always to think of money, always of money, had not they the old man and his wife got the cousin of the doctor’s wife always to give them presents of course they had.
    Ida did not stay there very long. She went to live with the cousin of the doctor’s wife and there she walked every day and had her dog. The name of this dog was Claudine. Ida did not keep her. She gave her away.
    She began to say to herself Ida dear Ida do you want to have two sisters or do you want to be one.
    There were five sisters once and Ida might have been one.
    Anybody likes to know about then and now, Ida was one and it is easy to have one sister and be a twin too and be a triplet three and be a quartet and four and be a quintuplet it is easy to have four but that just about does shut the door.
    Ida began to be known.
    As she walked along people began to be bewildered as they saw her and they did not call out to her but some did begin to notice her. Was she a twin well was she.
    She went away again. Going away again was not monotonous although it seemed so. Ida ate no fruit. It was the end of the week and she had gone away and she did not come back there.
    Pretty soon she said to herself Now listen to me, I am here and I know it, if I go away I will not like it because I am so used to my being here. I would not know what has happened, now just listen to me, she said to herself, listen to me, I am going to stop talking and I will.
    Of course she had gone away and she was living with a friend.
    How many of those who are yoked together have ever seen oxen.
    This is what Ida said and she cried. Her eyes were full of tears and she waited and then she went over everything that had ever happened and in the middle of it she went to sleep.
    When she awoke she was talking.
    How do you do she said.
    First she was alone and then soon everybody was standing listening. She did not talk to them.
    Of course she did think about marrying. She had not married yet but she was going to marry.
    She said if I was married I’d have children and if I had children then I’d be a mother and if I was a mother I’d tell them what to do.
    She decided that she was not going to marry and was not going to have children and was not going to be a mother.
    Ida decided that she was just going to talk to herself. Anybody could stand around and listen but as for her she was just going to talk to herself.
    She no longer even needed a twin.
    Somebody tried to interrupt her, he was an officer of course but how could he interrupt her if she was not talking to him but just talking to herself.
    She said how do you do and people around answered her and said how do you do. The officer said how do you do,