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Updated: May 28, 2025
She had been standing before him in the moonlight with downcast face; now she suddenly threw up her head with a gesture that reminded him of the way a drowning man throws up his hands. "You've been wanting to convert me," she said. "You want me to sign the pledge, and to stop going to dances and playing cards, and to bring up Christa that way."
Christa returned indolently to lounging upon the bed and reading her novel. If Ann had had less strength, she would have paced the floor of the outer room in impatience; as it was she sat still by the table which held the beer and stitched her seam diligently. About eight o'clock she heard Toyner's step. Was he going to haunt the house again in order to keep her from going out of it?
If you just say that, he'll have sense not to make a fuss." "Yes," said Christa sleepily. The canoe did not answer to Ann's one slim Indian paddle so lightly as the boat she had taken before had answered to the oars. Kneeling upright in the stern, she was obliged to keep her body in perfect balance.
"Ann," she said earnestly, "you are very splendid. I got up thinking there weren't no good in living at all." Ann eyed her sharply. Was one set of actions the same to Christa as another? and was she content to forget all their own shame and all her father's wretched plight if she could only have a few pleasures for herself?
There came before him a troop of the little children of Fentown, all the rosy-cheeked faces and laughing eyes and lithe little dancing forms that he had ever taken the trouble to notice; and Ann and Christa came and stood with them Christa with her dancing finery, with her beautiful, thoughtless, unemotional face, her yellow hair, and soft white hands; and Ann, a thousand times more beautiful to him, with her sun-brown tints and hazel eyes, so full of energy and forethought, her dark neat hair and working-dress and hardened hands this was beauty!
It was exactly the passive state that she had desired to evoke in Christa; but there are many spectres that come to our call and then appal us with their presence! Ann went on with her work. She was not in the habit of indulging herself in moods or reveries; still, within her grew a silent disapproval of Christa. She felt herself superior to her.
All the rest of him slowly veered round to thoughts of mercy rather than legal duty; he thought of Ann and Christa with hard, godless hearts, surrounded by every form of folly and sin, and he believed that Ann would keep her promise to him, and that different surroundings would give them different souls. Yet he felt convinced that God and conscience forbade this act of mercy.
There was a young man in Fentown called David Brown, a comely young fellow, belonging to one of the richer families of the place. He was good-natured, and an athlete; he had of late fallen into the habit of dropping in frequently to drink Ann's beer. She felt no doubt that Christa was his attraction.
Christa went to sleep, but Ann continued to sit, stitching at the very plain garb that Christa was to don on the morrow, not so much because she needed to work as because she felt no need of sleep. The night being close and warm, her window, a small French casement, stood open.
David giggled a little as he said it, betraying that he felt his words to be unusually personal. Ann wondered for a minute what could be the cause of this giggle, and then she returned to the subject of Christa's suffering. "I don't care about Christa." "The silly fellow!" thought Ann. She was six years older than he, and she felt herself to be twenty years older.
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