 | CALICO. Men, women, and ghosts |  |
9. CALICO.
It was about time for the four-o'clock train.
After all, I wonder if it is worth telling, — such a
simple, plotless record of a young girl's life, made up
of Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, like yours
or mine. Sharley was so exactly like other people!
How can it be helped that nothing remarkable happened
to her? But you would like the story?
It was about time for the four-o'clock train, then.
Sharley, at the cost of half a sugar-bowl (never
mind syntax; you know I mean the sugar, not the
glass), had enticed Moppet to betake himself out of
sight and out of mind till somebody should signify a
desire for his engaging presence; had steered clear of
Nate and Methuselah, and was standing now alone on
the back doorsteps opposite the chaise-house. One
could see a variety of things from those doorsteps,
— the chaise-house, for instance, with the old, solid,
square-built wagon rolled into it (Sharley passed many
a long “mending morning” stowed in among the
cushions of that old wagon); the great sweet-kept barn,
where the sun stole in warm at the chinks and filtered
through the hay; the well-curb folded in by a shadow;
a little slope, too, with a maple on it and
shades of brown and gold upon the grass; brown and
golden tints across the hills, and a sky of blue and
gold to dazzle one. Then there was a flock of robins
dipping southward. There was also the railroad.
Sharley may have had her dim consciousness of the
cosey barn and chicken's chirp, of brown and gold and
blue and dazzle and glory; but you don't suppose that
was what she had outgeneralled Moppet and stolen the
march upon Nate and Methuselah for. The truth is,
that the child had need of none of these things —
neither skies nor dazzle nor glory — that golden autumn
afternoon. Had the railroad bounded the universe
just then, she would have been content. For
Sharley was only a girl, — a very young, not very
happy, little girl, — and Halcombe Dike was coming
home to spend the Sunday.
Halcombe Dike, — her old friend Halcombe Dike.
She said the words over, apologizing a bit to herself
for being there to watch that railroad. Hal used to
be good to her when she was bothered with the children
and more than half tired of life. “Keep up good
courage, Sharley,” he would say. For the long summer
he had not been here to say it. And to-night he
would be here. To-night — to-night! Why should
not one be glad when one's old friends come back?
Mrs. Guest, peering through the pantry window, observed
— and observed with some motherly displeasure,
too much trouble to open the window — that Sharley
had put on her barbe, — that black barbe with the pink
watered ribbons run through it. So extravagant in
Sharley! Sharley would fain have been so extravagant
as to put on her pink muslin too this afternoon;
she had been more than half inclined to cry because
she could not; but as it was not orthodox in Green
Valley to wear one's “best clothes” on week-days,
except at picnics or prayer-meetings, she had submitted,
sighing, to her sprigged calico. It would
have been worth while, though, to have seen her half
an hour ago up in her room under the eaves, considering
the question; she standing there with the sleeves
of her dressing-sack fallen away from her pink, bare
arms, and the hair clinging loose and moist to her
bare white neck; to see her smooth the shimmering
folds, — there were rose-buds on that muslin, — and
look and long, hang it up, and turn away. Why
could there not be a little more rose-bud and shimmer
in people's lives! “Seems to me it 's all calico!”
cried Sharley.
Then to see her overturning her ribbon-box! Nobody
but a girl knows how girls dream over their
ribbons.
“He is coming!” whispered Sharley to the little
bright barbe, and to the little bright face that flushed
and fluttered at her in the glass, — “He is coming!”
Sharley looked well, waiting there in the calico
would look well in calico and lace; yet if you were to
ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is, or
if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair —
brown, I think — and wistful eyes; and that I never
saw her without a desire to stroke her, and make her
pur as I would a kitten.
How stiff and stark and black the railroad lay on
its yellow ridge! Sharley drew her breath when the
sudden four-o'clock whistle smote the air, and a faint,
far trail of smoke puffed through the woods, and wound
over the barren outline.
Her mother, seeing her steal away through the
kitchen-garden, and down the slope, called after
her: —
“Charlotte! going to walk? I wish you 'd let the
baby go too. Well, she does n't hear!”
I will not assert that Sharley did not hear. To be
frank, she was rather tired of that baby.
There was a foot-path through the brown and golden
grass, and Sharley ran over it, under the maple, which
was dropping yellow leaves, and down to the knot of
trees which lined the farther walls. There was a nook
here, — she knew just where, — into which one might
creep, tangled in with the low-hanging green of apple
and spruce, and wound about with grape-vines. Stooping
down, careful not to catch that barbe upon the
brambles, and careful not to soil so much as a sprig
of the clean light calico, Sharley hid herself in the
of purple smoke, the burning line of sandy bank, the
station, and the uphill road to the village. Oddly
enough, some old Scripture words — Sharley was not
much in the habit of quoting Scripture — came into her
thoughts just as she had curled herself comfortably
up beside the wall, her watching face against the grape-leaves:
“But what went ye out for to see?” “What
went ye out for to see?” She went on, dreamily
finishing, “A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and
more than a prophet,” and stopped, scarlet. What
had prophets to do with her old friend Halcombe
Dike?
Ah, but he was coming! he was coming! To
Sharley's eyes the laboring, crazy locomotive which
puffed him asthmatically up to the little depot was
a benevolent dragon, — if there were such things as
benevolent dragons, — very horrible, and she was
very much afraid of it; but very gracious, and she
should like to go out and pat it on the shoulder.
The train slackened, jarred, and stopped. An old
woman with thirteen bundles climbed out laboriously.
Two small boys turned somersaults from the platform.
Sharley strained her wistful eyes till they ached.
There was nobody else. Sharley was very young,
and very much disappointed, and she cried. The
glory had died from the skies. The world had gone
out.
She was sitting there all in a heap, her face in her
sounded near, and a voice humming an old army song.
She knew it; he had taught it to her himself. She
knew the step; for she had long ago trained her
slippered feet to keep pace with it. He had stepped
from the wrong side of the car, perhaps, or her eager
eyes had missed him; at any rate here he was, — a
young man, with honest eyes, and mouth a little
grave; a very plainly dressed young man, — his coat
was not as new as Sharley's calico, — but a young
man with a good step of his own, — strong, elastic, —
and a nervous hand.
He passed, humming his army song, and never knew
how the world lighted up again within a foot of him.
He passed so near that Sharley by stretching out her
hand could have touched him, — so near that she
could hear the breath he drew. He was thinking
to himself, perhaps, that no one had come from home
to meet him, and he had been long away; but then, it
was not his mother's fashion of welcome, and quickening
his pace at the thought of her, he left the
tangle of green behind, and the little wet face crushed
breathless up against the grape-leaves, and was out of
sight and knew nothing.
Sharley sprang up and bounded home. Her mother
opened her languid eyes wide when the child came
in.
“Dear me, Charlotte, how you do go chirping and
hopping round, and me with this great baby and my
if somebody 'd set you on fire! What 's the matter
with you, child?”
What was the matter, indeed! Sharley, in a little
spasm of penitence, — one can afford to be penitent
when one is happy, — took the baby and went away
to think about it. Surely he would come to see her
to-night; he did not often come home without seeing
Sharley; and he had been long away. At any rate
he was here; in this very Green Valley where the
days had dragged so drearily without him; his eyes
saw the same sky that hers saw; his breath drank the
same sweet evening wind; his feet trod the roads that
she had trodden yesterday, and would tread again to-morrow.
But I will not tell them any more of this,
— shall I, Sharley?
She threw her head back and looked up, as she
walked to and fro through the yard with the heavy
baby fretting on her shoulder. The skies were aflame
now, for the sun was dropping slowly. “He is here!”
they said. A belated robin took up the word: “He
is here!” The yellow maple glittered all over with
it: “Sharley, he is here!”
“The butter is here,” called her mother relevantly
from the house. “The butter is here now, and it 's
time to see about supper, Charlotte.”
“More calico!” said impatient Sharley, and she
gave the baby a jerk.
Whether he came or whether he did not come, there
In fact, there seldom was any time to dream in Mrs.
Guest's household. Mrs. Guest believed in keeping
people busy. She was busy enough herself when her
head did not ache. When it did, it was the least she
could do to see that other people were busy.
So Sharley had the table to set, and the biscuit to
bake, and the tea to make, and the pears to pick over;
she must run upstairs to bring her mother a handkerchief;
she must hurry for her father's clothes-brush
when he came in tired, and not so good-humored as he
might be, from his store; she must stop to rebuild the
baby's block-house, that Moppet had kicked over, and
snap Moppet's dirty, dimpled fingers for kicking it
over, and endure the shriek that Moppet set up therefor.
She must suggest to Methuselah that he could
find, perhaps, a more suitable book-mark for Robinson
Crusoe than his piece of bread and molasses, and intimate
doubts as to the propriety of Nate's standing on
the table-cloth and sitting on the toast-rack. And then
Moppet was at that baby again, dropping very cold
pennies down his neck. They must be made presentable
for supper, too, Moppet and Nate and Methuselah,
— Methuselah, Nate, and Moppet; brushed and
washed and dusted and coaxed and scolded and borne
with. There was no end to it. Would there ever
be any end to it? Sharley sometimes asked of her
weary thoughts. Sharley's life, like the lives of most
girls at her age, was one great unanswered question.
to do.
“I 'm going to holler to-night,” announced Moppet
at supper, pausing in the midst of his berry-cake, by
way of diversion, to lift the cat up by her tail. “I 'm
going to holler awful, and make you sit up and tell me
about that little boy that ate the giant, and Cinderella,
— how she lived in the stove-pipe, — and that man
that builded his house out of a bungle of straws; and
— well, there 's some more, but I don't remember 'em
just now, you know.”
“O Moppet!”
“I am,” glared Moppet over his mug. “You made
me put on a clean collar. You see if I don't holler
an' holler an' holler an' keep a-hollerin'!”
Sharley's heart sank; but she patiently cleared away
her dishes, mixed her mother's ipecac, read her father
his paper, went upstairs with the children, treated
Moppet with respect as to his buttons and boot-lacing,
and tremblingly bided her time.
“Well,” condescended that young gentleman, before
his prayers were over, “I b'lieve — give us our
debts — I 'll keep that hollerin' — forever 'n ever —
Namen — till to-morrow night. I ain't a — bit —
sleepy, but —” And nobody heard anything more
from Moppet.
The coast was clear now, and happy Sharley, with
bright cheeks, took her little fall hat that she was
trimming, and sat down on the front doorsteps; sat
flutter, and sat in vain. Twilight crept up the path,
up to her feet, folded her in; the warm color of her
plaided ribbons faded away under her eyes, and
dropped from her listless fingers; with them had faded
her bit of a hope for that night; Hal always came
before dark.
“Who cares?” said Sharley, with a toss of her soft,
brown head. Somebody did care nevertheless. Somebody
winked hard as she went upstairs.
However, she could light a lamp and finish her hat.
That was one comfort. It always is a comfort to
finish one's hat. Girls have forgotten graver troubles
than Sharley's in the excitement of hurried Saturday-night
millinery.
A bonnet is a picture in its way, and grows up
under one's fingers with a pretty sense of artistic
triumph. Besides, there is always the question:
Will it be becoming? So Sharley put her lamp on
a cricket, and herself on the floor, and began to sing
over her work. A pretty sight it was, — the low,
dark room with the heavy shadows in its corners; all
the light and color drawn to a focus in the middle of
it; Sharley, with her head bent — bits of silk like
broken rainbows tossed about her — and that little
musing smile, considering gravely, Should the white
squares of the plaid turn outward? and where should
she put the coral? and would it be becoming after
all? A pretty, girlish sight, and you may laugh at it
underlying it, just as a strain of fine, coy
sadness will wind through a mazourka or a waltz.
For who would see the poor little hat to-morrow at
church? and would he like it? and when he came to-morrow
night, — for of course he would come to-morrow
night, — would he tell her so?
When everybody else was in bed and the house
still, Sharley locked her door, furtively stole to the
bureau-glass, shyly tied on that hat, and more shyly
peeped in. A flutter of October colors and two
great brown eyes looked back at her encouragingly.
“I should like to be pretty,” said Sharley, and
asked the next minute to be forgiven for the vanity.
“At any rate,” by way of modification, “I should like
to be pretty to-morrow.”
She prayed for Halcombe Dike when she kneeled,
with her face hidden in her white bed, to say “Our
Father.” I believe she had prayed for him now every
night for a year. Not that there was any need of it,
she reasoned, for was he not a great deal better than
she could ever be? Far above her; oh, as far above
her as the shining of the stars was above the shining
of the maple-tree; but perhaps if she prayed very
hard they would give one extra, beautiful angel charge
over him. Then, was it not quite right to pray for
one's old friends? Besides — besides, they had a
pleasant sound, those two words: “Our Father.”
“I will be good to-morrow,” said Sharley, dropping
to church. I will listen to the minister, and I won't
plan out my winter dresses in prayer-time. I won't
be cross to Moppet, nor shake Methuselah. I will be
good. Hal will help me to be good. I shall see him
in the morning, — in the morning.”
Sharley's self-knowledge, like the rest of her, was
in the bud yet.
Her Sun-day, her one warm, shining day, opened
all in a glow. She danced down stairs at ten o'clock
in the new hat, in a haze of merry colors. She had
got breakfast and milked one cow and dressed four
boys that morning, and she felt as if she had earned
the right to dance in a haze of anything. The sunlight
quivered in through the blinds. The leaves of
the yellow maple drifted by on the fresh, strong wind.
The church-bells rang out like gold. All the world
was happy.
“Charlotte!” Her mother bustled out of the
“keeping-room” with her hat on. “I 've changed
my mind, Sharley, and feel so much better I believe I
will go to church. I 'll take Methuselah, but Nate
and Moppet had better stay at home with the baby.
The last time I took Moppet he fired three hymnbooks
at old Mrs. Perkins, — right into the crown of
her bonnet, and in the long prayer, too. That child
will be the death of me some day. I guess you 'll get
along with him, and the baby is n't quite as cross as
he was yesterday. You 'd just as lief go in the afternoon,
please.”
But Sharley, half-way down the stairs, stood still.
She was no saint, this disappointed little girl. Her
face, in the new fall hat, flushed angrily and her hands
dropped.
“O mother! I did want to go! You 're always
keeping me at home for something. I did want to
go!” — and rushed up stairs noisily, like a child, and
slammed her door.
“Dear me!” said her mother, putting on her spectacles
to look after her, — “dear me! what a temper!
I 'm sure I don't see what difference it makes to her
which half of the day she goes. Last Sunday she
must go in the afternoon, and would n't hear of anything
else. Well, there 's no accounting for girls!
Come, Methuselah.”
Is there not any “accounting for girls,” my dear
madam? What is the matter with those mothers, that
they cannot see? Just as if it never made any difference
to them which half of the day they went to church!
Well, well! we are doing it, all of us, as fast as we
can, — going the way of all the earth, digging little
graves for our young sympathies, one by one, covering
them up close. It grows so long since golden mornings
and pretty new bonnets and the sweet consciousness
of watching eyes bounded life for us! We have
dreamed our dreams; we have learned the long lesson
of our days; we are stepping on into the shadows.
which ye have not considered. We read your melodious
story through, but we have read other stories
since, and only its hœc fabula docet remains very fresh.
You will be as obtuse as we are some day, young
things! It is not neglect; it is not disapproval, — we
simply forget. But from such forgetfulness may the
good Lord graciously deliver us, one and all!
There! I fancy that I have made for Mrs. Guest
— sitting meantime in her cushioned pew (directly
behind Halcombe Dike), and comfortably looking over
the “Watts and Select” with Methuselah — a better
defence than ever she could have made for herself.
Between you and me, girls, — though you need not
tell your mother, — I think it is better than she deserves.
Sharley, upstairs, had slammed her door and locked
it, and was pacing hotly back and forth across her
room. Poor Sharley! Sun and moon and stars were
darkened; the clouds had returned after the rain.
She tore off the new hat and Sunday things savagely;
put on her old chocolate-colored morning-dress, with
a grim satisfaction in making herself as ugly as possible;
pulled down the ribboned chignon which she had
braided, singing, half an hour ago (her own, that
chignon); screwed her hair under a net into the most
unbecoming little pug of which it was capable, and
went drearily down stairs. Nate, enacting the cheerful
drama of “Jeff Davis on a sour apple-tree,” hung
of strangulation by the energetic Moppet. The baby
was calmly sitting in the squash-pies.
Halcombe Dike, coming home from church that
morning a little in advance of the crowd, saw a “Preraphaelite”
in the doorway of Mr. Guest's barn, and
quietly unlatching the gate came nearer to examine
it. It was worth examining. There was a ground of
great shadows and billowy hay; a pile of crimson
apples struck out by the light through a crack; two
children and a kitten asleep together in a sunbeam; a
girl on the floor with a baby crawling over her; a girl
in a chocolate-colored dress with yellow leaves in her
hair, — her hair upon her shoulders, and her eyelashes
wet.
“Well, Sharley!”
She looked up to see him standing there with his
grave, amused smile. Her first thought was to jump
and run; her second, to stand fire.
“Well, Mr. Halcombe! Moppet 's stuck yellow
leaves all over me; my hair 's down; I 've got on a
horrid old morning-dress; look pretty to see company,
don't I?”
“Very, Sharley.”
“Besides,” said Sharley, “I 've been crying, and
my eyes are red.”
“So I see.”
“No, you don't, for I 'm not looking at you.”
“But I am looking at you.”
“Oh!”
“What were you crying about, Sharley!”
“Because my grandmother 's dead,” said Sharley,
after some reflection.
“Ah, yes, I remember! about '36, I think, her
tombstone gives as the date of that sad event?”
“I think it 's wicked in people to laugh at people's
dead grandmothers,” said Sharley, severely. “You
ought to be at church.”
“So I was.”
“I was n't; mother would n't —” But her lip
quivered, and she stopped. The memory of the new
hat and Sunday dress, of the golden church-bells, and
hush of happy Sabbath-morning thoughts came up.
That he should see her now, in this plight, with her
swollen eyes and pouting lips, and her heart full of
wicked discontent!
“Would n't what, Sharley?”
“Don't!” she pleaded, with a sob; “I 'm cross;
I can't talk. Besides, I shall cry again, and I won't
cry again. You may let me alone, or you may go
away. If you don't go away you may just tell me
what you have been doing with yourself this whole
long summer. Working hard, of course. I don't see
but that everybody has to work hard in this world!
I hate this world! I suppose you 're a rich man by
this time?”
The young man looked at the chocolate dress, the
yellow leaves, the falling hair, and answered gravely,
were not encouraging just now. Perhaps they never
had been encouraging; only that he in his young
ardor had thought so. He was older now, and wiser.
He understood what a hard pull was before young
architects in America, — any young architect, the best
of young architects, — and whether there was a place
for him remained to be proved. He was willing to
work hard, and to hope long; but he grew a little
tired of it sometimes, and so — He checked himself
suddenly. “As if,” thought Sharley, “he were tired
of talking so long to me! He thought my question
impertinent.” She hid her face in her drooping hair,
and wished herself a mile away.
“There was something you once told me about some
sort of buildings?” she ventured, timidly, in a pause.
“The Crumpet Buildings. Yes, I sent my proposals,
but have not heard from them yet; I don't
know that I ever shall. That is a large affair, rather.
The name of the thing would be worth a good deal to
me if I succeeded. It would give me a start, and —”
“Ough!” exclaimed Sharley. She had been sitting
at his feet, with her face raised, and red eyes forgotten,
when, splash! an icy stream of water came into her
eyes, into her mouth, down her neck, up her sleeves.
She gasped, and stood drenched.
“O, it 's only a rain-storm,” said Moppet, appearing
on the scene with his empty dipper. “I got tired
of sleeping. I dreamed about three giants. I did n't
rain-storm, and you need n't mind it, you know.”
Dripping Sharley's poor little temper, never of the
strongest, quivered to its foundations. She took hold
of Moppet without any observation, and shook him
just about as hard as she could shake. When she
came to her senses her mother was coming in at the
gate, and Halcombe Dike was gone.
“I s'pose I 've got to 'tend to that hollering to-night,”
said Moppet, with a gentle sigh.
This was at a quarter past seven. Nate and Methuselah
were in bed. The baby was asleep. Moppet
had thrown his shoes into the water-pitcher but twice,
and run down stairs in his nightgown only four times
that evening; and Sharley felt encouraged. Perhaps,
after all, he would be still by half past seven; and by
half past seven — If Halcombe Dike did not come
to-night, something was the matter. Sharley decided
this with a sharp little nod.
She had devoted herself to Moppet with politic
punctiliousness. Would he lie at his lazy length,
with his feet on her clean petticoat, while she bent
and puzzled over his knotted shoestrings? Very well.
Did he signify a desire to pull her hair down and tickle
her till she gasped? She was at his service. Should
he insist upon being lulled to slumber by the recounted
adventures of Old Mother Hubbard, Red Riding-Hood,
and Tommy Tucker? Not those exactly, it
of mind till after sundown, but he should have David
and Goliath and Moses in the bulrushes with pleasure;
then Moses and Goliath and David again; after that,
David and Goliath and Moses, by way of variety.
She conducted every Scriptural dog and horse of her
acquaintance entirely round the globe in a series of
somewhat apocryphal adventures. She ransacked her
memory for biblical boys, but these met with small
favor. “Pooh! they were n't any good! They
could n't play stick-knife and pitch-in. Besides, they
all died. Besides, they were n't any great shakes.
Jack the Giant-Killer was worth a dozen of 'em, sir!
Now tell it all over again, or else I won't say my
prayers till next winter!”
After some delicate plotting, Sharley manœuvred
him through “Now I lay me,” and tucked him up,
and undertook a little Sunday-night catechizing, conscientiously
enough.
“Has Moppet been a good boy to-day?”
“Well, that 's a pretty question! Course I have!”
“But have you had any good thoughts, dear, you
know?”
“O yes, lots of 'em! been thinking about Blessingham.”
“Who? O, Absalom!”
“O yes, I 've been thinking about Blessingham,
you know; how he must have looked dreadful funny
hanging up there onto his hair, with all the darts 'n
him! No, you need n't go off, 'cause I ain't begun
to be asleep yet.”
Time and twilight were creeping on together.
Sharley was sure that she had heard the gate shut,
and that some one sat talking with her mother upon
the front doorsteps.
“O Moppet! Could n't you go to sleep without
me this one night, — not this one night?” and the hot,
impatient tears came in the dark.
“O no,” said immovable Moppet, “of course I
can't; and I 'spect I 'm going to lie awake all night
too. You 'd ought to be glad to stay with your little
brothers. The girl in my library-book, she was glad,
anyhow.”
Sharley threw herself back in the rocking-chair and
let her eyes brim over. She could hear the voices on
the doorsteps plainly; her mother's wiry tones and
the visitor's; it was a man's voice, low and less frequent.
Why did not her mother call her? Had not
he asked to see her? Had he not? Would nobody
ever come up to take her place? Would Moppet
never go to sleep? There he was peering at her over
the top of the sheet, with two great, mischievous,
wide-awake eyes. And time and twilight were wearing
on.
Let us talk about “affliction” with our superior,
reproving smile! Graves may close and hearts may
break, fortunes, hopes, and souls be ruined, but Moppet
doubted her mother's love, the use of life, and
the benevolence of God.
“I 'm lying awake to think about Buriah,” observed
Moppet, pleasantly. “David wanted to marry
Buriah's wife. She was a very nice woman.”
Silence followed this announcement.
“Sharley? you need n't think I 'm asleep, — any
such thing. Besides, if you go down you 'd better
believe I 'll holler! See here: s'pose I 'd slung my
dipper at Hal Dike, jest as David slung the stone at
Go-li —”
Another silence. Encouraged, Sharley dried her
tears and crept half-way across the floor. Then a
board creaked.
“O Sharley! Why don't people shut their eyes
when they die? Why, Jim Snow's dorg, he did n't.
I punched a frog yesterday. I want a drink of water.”
Sharley resigned herself in despair to her fate.
Moppet lay broad and bright awake till half past
eight. The voices by the door grew silent. Steps
sounded on the walk. The gate shut.
“That child has kept me up with him the whole
evening long,” said Sharley, coming sullenly down.
“You did n't even come and speak to him, mother.
I suppose Halcombe Dike never asked for me?”
“Halcombe Dike! Law! that was n't Halcombe
Dike. It was Deacon Snow, — the old Deacon, —
come in to talk over the revival. Halcombe Dike
Great interest up his way, the Deacon says. There 's
ten had convictions since Conference night. I wish
you were one of the interested, Sharley.”
But Sharley had fled. Fled away into the windy,
moonless night, down through the garden, out into
the sloping field. She ran back and forth through the
grass with great leaps, like a wounded thing. All her
worry and waiting and disappointment, and he had not
come! All the thrill and hope of her happy Sunday
over and gone, and he had not come! All the winter
to live without one look at him, — and he knew it, and
he would not come!
“I don't care!” sobbed Sharley, like a defiant child,
but threw up her hands with the words and wailed.
It frightened her to hear the sound of her own voice
— such a pitiful, shrill voice — in the lonely place.
She broke into her great leaps again, and so ran up
and down the slope, and felt the wind in her face. It
drank her breath away from her after a while; it was
a keen, chilly wind. She sat down on a stone in the
middle of the field, and it came over her that it was
a cold, dark place to be in alone; and just then she
heard her father calling her from the yard. So
she stood up very slowly and walked back.
“You 'll catch your death!” fretted her mother,
“running round bareheaded in all this damp. You
know how much trouble you are when you are sick,
too, and I think you ought to have more consideration
and not forget to put the baby's gingham apron in the
wash.”
Sharley lighted her kerosene lamp without reply.
It was the little kerosene with the crack in the handle.
Some vague notion that everything in the world had
cracked came to her as she crept upstairs. She put
her lamp out as soon as she was in her room, and
locked her door hard. She sat down on the side of
the bed and crossed her hands, and waited for her
father and mother to come upstairs. They came up
by and by and went to bed. The light that shone in
through the chink under the door went out. The
house was still.
She went over to the window then, threw it wide
open, and sat down crouched upon the broad sill.
She did not sob now nor wail out. She did not feel
like sobbing or wailing. She only wanted to think;
she must think, she had need to think. That this
neglect of Halcombe Dike's meant something she did
not try to conceal from her bitter thoughts. He had
not neglected her in all his life before. It was not the
habit, either, of this grave young man with the earnest
eyes to do or not to do without a meaning. He would
put silence and the winter between them. That was
what he meant. Sharley, looking out upon the windy
dark with straight-lidded eyes, knew that beneath and
beyond the silence of the winter lay the silence of a
life.
The silence of a life! The wind hushed into a
moment's calm while the words turned over in her
heart. The branches of a cherry-tree, close under
her sight, dropped lifelessly; a homesick bird gave
a little, still, mournful chirp in the dark. Sharley
gasped.
“It 's all because I shook Moppet! That 's it.
Because I shook Moppet this morning. He used to
like me, — yes, he did. He did n't know how cross
and ugly I am. No wonder he thought such a cross
and ugly thing could never be — could never be —”
She broke off, crimson. “His wife?” She would
have said the words without blush or hesitation a week
ago. Halcombe Dike had spoken no word of love to
her. But she had believed, purely and gravely, in
the deeps of her maiden thought, that she was dear
to him. Gravely and purely too she had dreamed
that this October Sunday would bring some sign to
her of their future.
He had been toiling at that business in the city now
a long while. Sharley knew nothing about business,
but she had fancied that, even though his “prospects”
were not good, he must be ready now to think of a
home of his own, — at least that he would give her
some hope of it to keep through the dreary, white
winter. But he had given her nothing to keep through
the winter, or through any winter of a wintry life;
nothing. The beautiful Sunday was over. He had
come, and he had gone. She must brush away the
that grave, sweet word had died in shame upon her
lips. She should not be his wife. She should never
be anybody's wife.
The Sunday Night Express shrieked up the valley,
and thundered by and away in the dark. Sharley
leaned far out into the wind to listen to the dying
sound, and wondered what it would seem like to-morrow
morning when it carried him away. With
its pause one of those sudden hushes fell again upon
the wind. The homesick bird fluttered about a little,
hunting for its nest.
“Never to be his wife!” moaned Sharley. What
did it mean? “Never to be his wife?” She pressed
her hands up hard against her two temples, and considered:
—
Moppet and the baby, and her mother's headaches;
milking the cow, and kneading the bread, and darning
the stockings; going to church in old hats, — for what
difference was it going to make to anybody now,
whether she trimmed them with Scotch plaid or sarcenet
cambric? — coming home to talk over revivals
with Deacon Snow, or sit down in a proper way, like
other old people, in the house with a lamp, and read
Somebody's Life and Letters. Never any more moonlight,
and watching, and strolling! Never any more
hoping, or wishing, or expecting, for Sharley.
She jumped a little off her window-sill; then sat
down again. That was it. Moppet, and the baby,
for thirty, for forty, for — the dear Lord, who
pitied her, only knew how many years.
But Sharley did not incline to think much about
the Lord just then. She was very miserable, and very
much alone and unhelped. So miserable, so alone and
unhelped, that it never occurred to her to drop down
right there with her despairing little face on the window-sill
and tell Him all about it. O Sharley! did
you not think He would understand?
She had made up her mind — decidedly made up
her mind — not to go to sleep that night. The unhappy
girls in the novels always sit up, you know.
Besides, she was too wretched to sleep. Then the
morning train went early, at half past five, and she
should stay here till it came.
This was very good reasoning, and Sharley certainly
was very unhappy, — as unhappy as a little girl
of eighteen can well be; and I suppose it would sound
a great deal better to say that the cold morning looked
in upon her sleepless pain, or that Aurora smiled upon
her unrested eyes, or that she kept her bitter watch
until the stars grew pale (and a fine chance that would
be to describe a sunrise too); but truth compels me
to state that she did what some very unhappy people
have done before her, — found the window-sill uncomfortable,
cramped, neuralgic, and cold, — so undressed
and went to bed and to sleep, very much as she would
have done if there had been no Halcombe Dike in
and Nature would not be cheated out of her rights
in such a round, young, healthful little body.
But that did not make her much the happier when
she woke in the cold gray of the dawn to listen for
the early train. It was very cold and very gray, not
time for the train yet, but she could not bear to lie
still and hear the shrill, gay concert of the birds, to
watch the day begin, and think how many days must
have beginning, — so she crept faintly up and out into
the chill. She wandered about for a time in the raw,
brightening air. The frost lay crisp upon the short
grass; the elder-bushes were festooned with tiny white
tassels; the maple-leaves hung fretted with silver; the
tangle of apple-trees and spruces was powdered and
pearled. She stole into it, as she had stolen into it
in the happy sunset-time so long ago — why! was it
only day before yesterday? — stole in and laid her
cheek up against the shining, wet vines, which melted
warm beneath her touch, and shut her eyes. She
thought how she would like to shut and hide herself
away in a place where she could never see the frescoed
frost or brightening day, nor hear the sound of
chirping birds, nor any happy thing.
By and by she heard the train coming, and footsteps.
He came springing by in his strong, man's
way as he had come before. As before, he passed
near — how very near! — to the quivering white face
crushed up against the vine-leaves, and went his way
and knew nothing.
The train panted and raced away, shrieked a little
in a doleful, breathless fashion, grew small, grew less,
grew dim, died from sight in pallid smoke. The track
stood up on its mound of frozen bank, blank and
mute, like a corpse from which the soul had fled.
Sharley came into the kitchen at six o'clock. The
fire was burning hotly under the boiler. The soiled
clothes lay scattered about. Her mother stood over
the tubs, red-faced and worried, complaining that
Sharley had not come to help her. She turned, when
the girl opened the door, to scold her a little. The
best of mothers are apt to scold on Monday morning.
Sharley stood still a moment and looked around.
She must begin it with a washing-day then, this other
life that had come to her. Her heart might break,
but the baby's aprons must be boiled — to-day, next
week, another week; the years stretched out into
one wearisome, endless washing-day. O, the dreadful
years! She grew a little blind and dizzy, sat down
on a heap of table-cloths, and held up her arms.
“Mother, don't be cross to me this morning, —
don't! O mother, mother, mother! I wish there
were anybody to help me!”
The battle-fields of life lie in ambush. We trip
along on our smiling way and they give no sign. We
turn sharp corners where they hide in shadow. No
drum-beat sounds alarum. It is the music and the
dress-parade to-night, the groaning and the blood
to-morrow.
Sharley had been little more than a child, in her
unreasoning young joy, when she knotted the barbe at
her throat on Saturday night. “I am an old woman
now,” she said to herself on Monday morning. Not
that her saying so proved anything, — except, indeed,
that it was her first trouble, and that she was very
young to have a trouble. Yet, since she had the
notion, she might as well, to all intents and purposes,
have shrivelled into the caps and spectacles of a centenarian.
“Imaginary griefs are real.” She took, indeed,
a grim sort of pleasure in thinking that her
youth had fled away, and forever, in thirty-six hours.
However that might be, that October morning
ushered Sharley upon battle-ground; nor was the
struggle the less severe that she was so young and
so unused to struggling.
I have to tell of nothing new or tragic in the child's
days; only of the old, slow, foolish pain that gnaws at
the roots of things. Something was the matter with
the sunsets and the dawns. Moonrise was an agony.
The brown and golden grass had turned dull and
dead. She would go away up garret and sit with
her fingers in her ears, that she might not hear the
frogs chanting in the swamp at twilight.
One night she ran away from her father and mother.
It chanced to be an anniversary of their wedding-day;
they had kissed each other after tea and talked of old
times and blushed a little, their married eyes occupied
and content with one another; she felt with a sudden,
and so ran out into the field and sat down there on her
stone in the dark. She rather hoped that they would
wonder where she was before bedtime. It would be a
bit of comfort. She was so cold and comfortless. But
nobody thought of her; and when she came weakly
up the yard at ten o'clock, the door was locked.
For a week she went about her work like a sleepwalker.
Her future was settled. Life was over.
Why make ado? The suns would set and the moons
would rise: let them; there would always be suns
to set and moons to rise. There were dinners to get
and stockings to mend; there would always be dinners
to get and stockings to mend. She was put into
the world for the sake of dinners and stockings, apparently.
Very well; she was growing used to it; one
could grow used to it. She put away the barbe and
the pink muslin, locked her ribbon-box into the lower
drawer, gave up crimping her hair, and wore the
chocolate calico all day. She went to the Thursday-evening
conference, discussed the revival with Deacon
Snow, and locked herself into her room one night to
put the lamp on the bureau before the glass and shake
her soft hair down about her colorless, inexpectant
face, to see if it were not turning gray. She was
disappointed to find it as brown and bright as ever.
But Sharley was very young, and the sweet, persistent
hopes of youth were strong in her. They woke
up presently with a sting like the sting of a frost-bite.
“O, to think of being an old maid, in a little black
silk apron, and having Halcombe Dike's wedding-cards
laid upon a shelf!”
She was holding the baby when this “came all over
her,” and she let him drop into the coal-hod, and sat
down to cry.
What had she done that life should shut down before
her in such cruel bareness? Was she not young,
very young to be unhappy? She began to fight a
little with herself and Providence in savage mood;
favored the crimped hair and Scotch plaids again,
tried a nutting-party and a sewing-circle, as well as
a little flirtation with Jim Snow. This lasted for another
week. At the end of that time she went and
sat down alone one noon on a pile of kindlings in the
wood-house, and thought it over.
“Why, I can't!” her eyes widening with slow
terror. “Happiness won't come. I can't make it.
I can't ever make it. And O, I 'm just at the beginning
of everything!”
Somebody called her just then to peel the potatoes
for dinner. She thought — she thought often in those
days — of that fancy of hers about calico-living.
Was not that all that was left for her? Little dreary,
figures, all just alike, like the chocolate morning-dress?
O, the rose-bud and shimmer that might have
been waiting somewhere! And O, the rose-bud and
shimmer that were forever gone!
The frosted golds of autumn melted into a clear,
round on her old routine. It never grew any the
easier or softer. The girl's little rebellious feet trod
it bitterly. She hated the darning and the sweeping
and the baking and the dusting. She hated the sound
of the baby's worried cry. She was tired of her
mother's illnesses, tired of Moppet's mischief, tired of
Methuselah's solemnity. She used to come in sometimes
from her walk to the office, on a cold, moonlight
evening, and stand looking in at them all
through the “keeping-room” window, — her father
prosing over the state of the flour-market, her mother
on the lounge, the children waiting for her to put
them to bed; Methuselah poring over his arithmetic
in his little-old-mannish way; Moppet tying the baby
and the kitten together, — stand looking till the hot,
shamed blood shot to her forehead, for thought of how
she was wearied of the sight.
“I can't think what 's got into Sharley,” complained
her mother; “she has been as cross as a bear this good
while. If she were eight years old, instead of eighteen,
I should give her a good whipping and send her to
bed!”
Poor Sharley nursed her trouble and her crossness
together, in her aggrieved, girlish way, till the light
went out of her wistful eyes, and little sharp bones began
to show at her wrists. She used to turn them about
and pity them. They were once so round and winsome!
Now it was probably a fact that, as for the matter
to what it would be as the wife of Halcombe Dike.
Double your toil into itself, and triple it by the measure
of responsibility, and there you have your married
life, young girls, — beautiful, dim Eden that you have
made of it! But there was never an Eden without its
serpent, I fancy. Besides, Sharley, like the rest of
them, had not thought as far as that.
Then — ah then, what toil would not be play-day
for the sake of Halcombe Dike? what weariness and
wear could be too great, what pain too keen, if they
could bear it together?
O, you mothers! do you not see that this makes
“a' the difference”? You have strength that your
daughter knows not of. There are hands to help you
over the thorns (if not, there ought to be). She
gropes and cuts her way alone. Be very patient with
her in her little moods and selfishnesses. No matter if
she might help you more about the baby: be patient.
Her position in your home is at best an anomalous
one, — a grown woman, with much of the dependence
of a child. She must have all the jars and tasks and
frets of family life, without the relief of housewifely
invention and authority. God and her own heart will
teach her in time what she owes to you. Never fear
for that. But bear long with her. Do not exact too
much. The life you give her did not come at her
asking. Consider this well; and do not press the
debt beyond its due.
“I don't see that there is ever going to be any end
to anything!” gasped Sharley at night between Moppet's
buttons.
This set her to thinking. What if one made an
end?
She went out one cold, gray afternoon in the thick
of a snow-storm and wandered up and down the railroad.
It was easy walking upon the sleepers, the
place was lonely, and she had come out to be alone.
She liked the beat of the storm in her face for a while,
the sharp turns of the wind, and the soft touch of the
snow that was drifting in little heaps about her feet.
Then she remembered of how small use it was to like
anything in the world now, and her face grew as wild
as the storm.
Fancy yourself hemmed in with your direst grief
by a drifting sleet in such a voiceless, viewless place
as that corpse-like track, — the endless, painless track,
stretching away in the white mystery, at peace, like
all dead things.
What Sharley should have done was to go home as
straight as she could go, put on dry stockings, and get
her supper. What she did was to linger, as all people
linger, in the luxury of their first wretchedness, —
linger till the uncanny twilight fell and shrouded her
in. Then a thought struck her.
A freight-train was just coming in, slowly but
heavily. Sharley, as she stepped aside to let it pass,
fixed her eyes upon it for a moment, then, with a
lay at her feet, — a round, firm rod-end, — and placed
it diagonally upon the rail. The cars rumbled by and
over it. Sharley bent to see. It was crushed to a
shapeless twist. Her face whitened. She sat down
and shivered a little. But she did not go home. The
Evening Accommodation was due now in about ten
minutes.
Girls, if you think I am telling a bit of sensational
fiction, I wish you would let me know.
“It would be quick and easy,” thought Sharley.
The man of whom she had read in the Journal last
night, — they said he must have found it all over in
an instant. An instant was a very short time! And
forty years, — and the little black silk apron, — and
the cards laid up on a shelf! O, to go out of life, —
anywhere, anyhow, out of life! No, the Sixth Commandment
had nothing to do with ending one's self!
An unearthly, echoing shriek broke through the
noise of the storm, — nothing is more unearthly than
a locomotive in a storm. Sharley stood up, — sat
down again. A red glare struck the white mist,
broadened, brightened, grew.
Sharley laid her head down with her small neck
upon the rail, and — I am compelled to say that she
took it up again faster than she laid it down. Took it
up, writhed off the track, tumbled down the banking,
hid her face in a drift, and crouched there with the
cold drops on her face till the hideous, tempting thing
shot by.
“I guess con-sumption would be — a — little better!”
she decided, crawling to her feet.
But the poor little feet could scarcely carry her.
She struggled to the street, caught at the fences for a
while, then dropped.
Somebody stumbled over her. It was Cousin Sue
— Halcombe Dike's Cousin Sue.
“Deary me!” she said; and being five feet seven,
with strong Yankee arms of her own, she took Sharley
up in them, and carried her to the house as if she had
been a baby.
Sharley did not commit the atrocity of fainting, but
found herself thoroughly chilled and weak. Cousin
Sue bustled about with brandy and blankets, and
Sharley, watching her through her half-closed eyes,
speculated a little. Had she anybody's wedding-cards
laid up on a shelf? She had the little black
apron at any rate. Poor Cousin Sue! Should she
be like that? “Poor Cousin Charlotte!” people
would say.
Cousin Sue had gone to see about supper when
Sharley opened her eyes and sat strongly up. A
gentle-faced woman sat between her and the light, in
a chair cushioned upon one side for a useless arm.
Halcombe had made that chair. Mrs. Dike had been
a busy, cheery woman, and Sharley had always felt
sorry for her since the sudden day when paralysis crippled
her good right hand; three years ago that was
now; but she was not one of those people to whom it
she was Halcombe's mother, and so Sharley had never
said it. It struck her freshly now that this woman
had seen much ill-fortune in her widowed years, and
that she had kept a certain brave, contented look in
her eyes through it all.
It struck her only as a passing thought, which might
never have come back had not Mrs. Dike pushed her
chair up beside her, and given her a long, quiet look
straight in the eyes.
“It was late for you to be out in the storm, my
dear, and alone.”
“I 'd been out a good while. I had been on — the
track,” said Sharley, with a slight shiver. “I think
I could not have been exactly well. I would not go
again. I must go home now. But oh” — her voice
sinking — “I wish nobody had found me, I wish nobody
had found me! The snow would have covered
me up, you see.”
She started up flushing hot and frightened. What
had she been saying to Halcombe's mother?
But Halcombe's mother put her healthy soft hand
down on the girl's shut fingers. Women understand
each other in flashes.
“My dear,” she said, without prelude or apology,
“I have a thing to say to you. God does not give us
our troubles to think about; that 's all. I have lived
more years than you. I know that He never gives
us our troubles to think about.”
“I don't know who 's going to think about them if
we don't!” said Sharley, half aggrieved.
“Supposing nobody thinks of them, where 's the
harm done? Mark my words, child: He sends them
to drive us out of ourselves, — to drive us out. He
had much rather we would go of our own accord, but
if we won't go we must be sent, for go we must.
That 's just about what we 're put into this world for,
and we 're not fit to go out of it till we have found
this out.”
Now the moralities of conversation were apt to glide
off from Sharley like rain-drops from gutta-percha, and
I cannot assert that these words would have made
profound impression upon her had not Halcombe Dike's
mother happened to say them.
Be that as it may, she certainly took them home
with her, and pondered them in her heart; pondered
till late in her feverish, sleepless night, till her pillow
grew wet, and her heart grew still. About midnight
she jumped out into the cold, and kneeled, with her
face hidden in the bed.
“O, I 've been a naughty girl!” she said, just as
she might have said it ten years ago. She felt so
small, and ignorant, and weak that night.
Out of such smallness, and ignorance, and weakness
great knowledge and strength may have beautiful
growth. They came in time to Sharley, but it was a
long, slow time. Moppet was just as unendurable,
the baby just as fretful, life just as joyless, as if she had
plans about it.
“Calico! calico!” she cried out a dozen times a
day; “nothing but calico!”
But by and by it dawned in her thoughts that this
was a very little matter to cry out about. What if
God meant that some lives should be “all just alike,”
and like nothing fresh or bonnie, and that hers should
be one? That was his affair. Hers was to use the
dull gray gift he gave — whatever gift he gave — as
loyally and as cheerily as she would use treasures of
gold and rose-tint. He knew what he was doing.
What he did was never forgetful or unkind. She
felt — after a long time, and in a quiet way — that
she could be sure of that.
No matter about Halcombe Dike, and what was
gone. No matter about the little black aprons, and
what was coming. He understood all about that.
He would take care of it.
Meantime, why could she not as well wash Moppet's
face with a pleasant word as with a cross one? darn
the stockings with a smile as well as a frown? stay
and hear her mother discuss her headaches as well as
run away and think of herself? Why not give happiness
since she could not have it? be of use since
nobody was of much use to her? Easier saying than
doing, to be sure, Sharley found; but she kept the
idea in mind as the winter wore away
She was thinking about it one April afternoon, when
woods. She had need enough of a walk. It
was four weeks now since she had felt the wide wind
upon her face; four weeks pleasantly occupied in engineering
four boys through the measles; and if ever
a sick child had the capacity for making of himself a
seraph upon earth it was Moppet. It was a thin little
face which stood out against the “green mist” of the
unfurling leaves as Sharley wandered in and out with
sweet aimlessness among the elms and hickories; very
thin, with its wistful eyes grown hollow; a shadow of
the old Sharley who fluttered among the plaid ribbons
one October morning. It was a saddened face — it
might always be a saddened face — but a certain
pleasant, rested look had worked its way about her
mouth, not unlike the rich mellowness of a rainy sunset.
Not that Sharley knew much about sunsets yet;
but she thought she did, which, as I said before,
amounts to about the same thing.
She was thinking with a wee glow of pleasure how
the baby's arms clung around her neck that morning,
and how surprised her mother looked when Methuselah
cried at her taking this walk. As you were
warned in the beginning, nothing remarkable ever
happened to Sharley. Since she had begun in practice
to approve Mrs. Dike's theory, that no harm
is done if we never think of our troubles, she had
neither become the village idol, nor in any remarkable
degree her mother's pride. But she had nevertheless
home, — a much larger niche, perhaps, than the excellent
Mrs. Guest was well aware of.
“I don't care how small it is,” cried Sharley, “as
long as I have room to put my two feet on and look
up.”
And for that old pain? Ah, well, God knew about
that, and Sharley, — nobody else. Whatever the winter
had taught her she had bound and labelled in her
precise little way for future use. At least she had
learned — and it is not everybody who learns it at
eighteen, — to wear her life bravely — “a rose with a
golden thorn.”
I really think that this is the place to end my story,
so properly polished off with a moral. So many Sharleys,
too, will never read beyond. But being bound
in honor to tell the whole moral or no moral, I must
add, that while Sharley walked and thought among
her hickories there came up a thunder-storm. It fell
upon her without any warning. The sky had been
clear when she looked at it last. It gaped at her now
out of the throats of purple-black clouds. Thunders
crashed over and about her. All the forest darkened
and reeled. Sharley was enough like other girls to
be afraid of a thunder-storm. She started with a cry
to break her way through the matted undergrowth;
saw, or felt that she saw, the glare of a golden arrow
overhead; threw out her hands, and fell crushed, face
downward, at the foot of a scorched tree.
When she opened her eyes she was sitting under a
wood-pile. Or, to speak more accurately, she was
sitting in Mr. Halcombe Dike's lap, and Mr. Halcombe
Dike was under the wood-pile.
It was a low, triangular wood-pile, roofed with pine
boards, through which the water was dripping. It
stood in the centre of a large clearing, exposed to the
rain, but safe.
“Oh!” said Sharley.
“That 's right,” said he, “I knew you were only
stunned. I 've been rubbing your hands and feet.
It was better to come here than to run the blockade
of that patch of woods to a house. Don't try to talk.”
“I 'm not,” said Sharley, with a faint little laugh,
“it 's you that are talking”; and ended with a weak
pause, her head falling back where she had found it,
upon his arm.
“I would n't talk,” repeated the young man, relevantly,
after a profound silence of five minutes. “I
was coming `across lots' from the station. You fell
— Sharley, you fell right at my feet!”
He spoke carelessly, but Sharley, looking up, saw
that his face was white.
“I believe I will get down,” she observed, after
some consideration, lifting her head.
“I don't see how you can, you know,” he suggested,
helplessly; “it pours as straight as a deluge
out there. There is n't room in this place for two
people to sit.”
So they “accepted the situation.”
The clouds broke presently, and rifts of yellow
light darted in through the fragrant, wet pine boards.
Sharley's hair had fallen from her net and covered her
face. She felt too weak to push it away. After some
thought Halcombe Dike pushed it away for her, reverently,
with his strong, warm hand. The little white,
trembling face shone out. He turned and looked at it
— the poor little face! — looked at it gravely and
long.
But Sharley, at the look, sat up straight. Her heart
leaped out into the yellow light. All her dreary winter
danced and dwindled away. Through the cracks
in the pine boards a long procession of May-days came
filing in. The scattering rain-drops flamed before her.
“All the world and all the waters blushed and
bloomed.” She was so very young!
“I could not speak,” he told her quietly, “when I
was at home before. I could never speak till now.
Last October I thought” — his voice sinking hoarsely
— “I thought, Sharley, it could never be. I could
barely eke out my daily bread; I had no right to
ask you — to bind you. You were very young; I
thought, perhaps, Sharley, you might forget. Somebody
else might make you happier. I would not
stand in the way of your happiness. I asked God to
bless you that morning when I went away in the cars,
Sharley. Sharley!”
Something in her face he could not understand.
will never understand. She hid it in her bright,
brown hair; put her hand up softly upon his cheek
and cried.
“If you would like to hear anything about the
business part of it — ” suggested the young man,
clearing his throat. But Sharley “hated business.”
She would not hear.
“Not about the Crumpet Buildings? Well, I carried
that affair through, — that 's all.”
They came out under the wide sky, and walked
home hand in hand. All the world was hung with
crystals. The faint shadow of a rainbow quivered
across a silver cloud.
The first thing that Sharley did when she came
home was to find Moppet and squeeze him.
“O Moppet, we can be good girls all the same if
we are happy, can't we?”
“No, sir!” said injured Moppet. “You don't
catch me!”
“But O Moppet, see the round drops hanging and
burning on the blinds! And how the little mud-puddles
shine, Moppet!”
Out of her pain and her patience God had brought
her beautiful answer. It was well for Sharley. But
if such answer had not come? That also would have
been well.
| CALICO. Men, women, and ghosts | |