United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Between the two of them, however, there was this one essential difference: Scott's forecastings were vague and rosy dreams, Catie's were concrete plans. None the less and despite that difference, from that time onward, it was tacitly agreed between the children that Scott would one day be a minister, with Catie for his wife.
Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards the removal of his doubts concerning Catie's pinchbeck chain. Later, as it chanced, Reed Opdyke and Scott Brenton found themselves going up the street together. "It's all hours, I suppose," Opdyke said rather indistinctly through a mammoth yawn. "Still, Brenton, what if it is? Come along to Mory's."
Outwardly, Opdyke's manner was respect itself; but there was an odd little twinkle in his eyes, as he gazed down on the top of Catie's flower-strewn hat, now tipped coquettishly askew as the girl turned her head sidewise and upward to speak to her tall companion. Catie was pretty, of course; but was she quite well right?
She could have dreamed of another sort of wife for her boy, for Catie's crudeness occasionally irritated her, Catie's self-centred ambition, her intervals of density sometimes came upon Mrs. Brenton's nerves. However, girls were scarce upon the horizon of the Brentons. Catie was not perfect; but, at least, she might be infinitely worse.
Catie, if she chose, could keep Scott's feet well in the limits of the beaten trails. It should be her duty to impress on Catie's girlish mind that the beaten trail was the only one for him to follow, the path of expediency as well as the path of holiness; that complete contentment and success lay only at its other end. Accordingly, Mrs.
Catie was able to look out for herself, Catie's mother explained contentedly to her new neighbours, and she knew enough to come home, when she was hungry. Best let her go her ways, then. She would learn to be a little woman, all the sooner; and, in the meantime, it was a great deal easier to do the housework without having a child under foot about the kitchen.
To be sure, Catie's gowns had the most trimming on them; but her satisfaction in that fact was somewhat modified by the discovery that all her trimming was running the wrong way. Nevertheless, Catie enjoyed some happy hours, despite the chilling disappointment of finding her frocks inadequate.
Brenton's make-up, however, that she took no thought of Catie's life, save in so far as it could be applied to the ultimate development of Scott, her son. "A puffic' fibbous!" the monthly nurse had announced triumphantly, when she had presented Mrs. Opdyke's first-born son to his mother for her inspection.
I shall be there, in the very front seat, dressed in flowing curls," Catie's hair, at this epoch, was pokery in its stiff straightness; "and a real lace dress. And, after service, all the rich people in the church will ask us out to dinner.
For Brenton realized with a disconcerting clearness that something was amiss, much, much amiss; realized, moreover, that he had known it vaguely all along. The trouble, albeit still nameless, had been there all the time, from the first day that he, smarting from the impact of the maternal slipper, had smarted yet more keenly beneath the lash of Catie's young disdain.
Word Of The Day