United States or Zambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She was young, her skin had not a line. But it was as if she had changed places with her wrinkled grandmother, to whom the expression of complacent maidenhood now belonged. As Clethera propped the glass again in place, she heard Jules come in. She resumed her sweeping with resolute strokes on the bare boards, which would explain to his ear the necessity of her presence.
The weather-worn, low domicile was bowered in trees. There was a convenient stile two steps high in the separating fence, and it had long been made a thoroughfare by the families. On the top step sat Clethera, Melinda Crée's granddaughter. Clethera had been Honoré's playmate since infancy. She was a lithe, dark girl, with more of her French father in her than of her half-breed mother.
She continued to repeat, as he raised the bid higher, "It was nothing but some little bushes, doctor; it was nothing but some little bushes." Clethera felt the same kind of protecting tenderness for this self-restrained squaw that Honoré had for his undersized parent, whom he always called by the baptismal name.
He pushed the hair from her wet face. The fate of temperament and the deep tides of existence had them in merciless sweep. "Clethera," represented Honoré, "the rillation is not mix' bad with Jules and Melinda." Clethera let the assertion pass unchallenged. "And this house, it pretty good house. You like it well as de hudder?"
Honoré acknowledged with hearty gratitude the supper which Melinda Crée had baked and her granddaughter had carried into the bereaved house while its inmates were out. "They not get fish pie like that in de war. Jules, he say it is better than poor Thérèse could make," Honoré added, handsomely, with large unsuspicion. Clethera shook a finger in his face. "Honoré McCarty, you got watch dat Jules!
"The war is end'," said Honoré. "Peace is declare' yesterday!" He threw his bundle down and looked fondly around the rough walls. "All de peop' laugh at me because I go to war when de war is end'!" "They laugh because de war is end'! I laugh too?" said Clethera, relaxing to sobs. Tears and cries which had been shut up a day and a night were let loose with French abandon.
I got to watch Melinda. Simon Leslie, he have come by and put it in Jules' head since de funer'l! I hear it, me." The young man's face changed through the dusk. He braced his back against the fence and breathed the deep sigh of tried patience. "Honoré, how many mothers is it you have already?" "I have not count'," said the young man, testily. "Count dem mothers," ordered Clethera.
Its crowds in summer brought variety enough; and its virgin winter snows, the dog-sledges, the ice-boats, were month by month a procession of joys. Clethera wondered that Honoré persistently went where newspapers were read and discussed. He stuffed them in his pockets, and pored over them while waiting in his boat beside the wharf. People would fight out that war with Spain.
In carrying laundered clothing through the village street, Melinda Crée was carefully chaperoned by her granddaughter, and Honoré kept Jules under orders in the boat. But of early mornings and late twilights there was no restraining the twittering widower. "Melinda 'tend to her work and is behave if Jules let her alone," Clethera reported to Honoré.
Though Clethera told herself savagely she not care for anything in de world, her Indian eye took joy of these sights. The shower-bath from the trees she endured without a shiver. Jules sat beside Melinda to be comforted He wept for Honoré, and praised his boy, gasconading with time-worn boasts. "I got de hang of him, and now I got to part! But de war will end, now Honoré have gone into it.
Word Of The Day