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Marvellous elixir that makes hopes certainty and gilds each cloud! One morning a man waiting for a letter from an absent son heard the telephone ring, and saw Abbie drop her letters and catch up the receiver: "Yes, I'm Miss Todd. Oh! Mr. Keep? Yes. Yes I've got it here." Her face grew deathly white. "What! Selling at twelve!" The man feared she was about to fall.
How she had loved the picture when she was a little girl; her mother had explained it to her many times the bird teaching its little ones to fly; the big, shaggy dog encouraging its waddling puppies; the mother coaxing her baby to walk alone. At midnight Abbie got out of bed, picked up the dinner-bell by the clapper, and went back up-stairs to the South bedroom.
Ester had declined the assistance of Maggie feeling that though she knew perfectly well how to make her own toilet, she did not know how to receive assistance in the matter. "Now I will leave you for a little," Abbie said, taking up her tiny Bible. "Ester, where is your Bible? I suppose you have it with you?" Ester looked annoyed. "I don't believe I have," she said hurriedly.
You had been quiet for a while and all at once you broke out delirious you was beggin' somebody or other not to do somethin'. For your sake, for their own sake, they mustn't do it. 'Twas awful to hear you. A mixed-up jumble about Abbie, whoever she is not much, by the way you went on about her and please, please, please, for the Lord's sake, give it up.
What would John, the stylish waiter at Uncle Ralph's, think if he could see her now, and how funny Abbie would look engaged in such employment; but Sadie looked so bright and relieved and rested, and chatted so gayly, that presently Ester gave another little sigh and said: "Poor Abbie! how very, very lonely she must be to-night. I wish she were here for you to cheer her, Sadie."
Then Abbie grew penitent again. "Positively, Ester, I won't speak again: you will be sleepy all day to-morrow, and you needn't think I shall give you a chance even to wink. Good-night." "Good-night," repeated Ester; but she still kept her eyes wide open. Her journey, and her arrival, and Abbie, and the newness and strangeness of everything around her, had banished all thought of sleep.
She'd left the door open, and the smell of dinner that blew through it was tantalizin'. Abbie was dressed in her Sunday togs and her hair was frizzed till she couldn't wrinkle her forehead. If the truth was known, I cal'late she'd seen Kenelm go past her house on the way downtown and was layin' for him when he come back, but she acted dreadful surprised. "'Why, Mr.
When you get back a copper of that money I'll believe the millennium's struck, that's all." "Hum! Well, I'll help you believe it that is, if I have time afore I drop dead of heart disease. Abbie, you'd make a good lawyer; you can get up an argument out of a perfect agreement. I said the thirty dollars was lost, to begin with.
Abbie couldn't have chosen a better time. Whom do you suppose she is to marry? What a queer creature, not to tell us. Say she can go, mother quick!" Sadie's last point was a good one in Mrs. Ried's opinion. Perhaps the giddy Sadie, at once her pride and her anxiety, might learn a little self-reliance by feeling a shadow of the weight of care which rested continually on Ester.
But if he insisted as he had with the store and the position in the post-office! No he had done too much already. Besides, she could never repay him if anything went wrong. No this was not her chance for freedom. Abbie handed the certificate back. "Queer way of making money," was all she said as she reached for her hat and shawl, and went home to dinner.
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