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Updated: May 9, 2025
"I think a man feels more quiet somehow, when he's out there, teacher. Father says I'm a wild chap and uneasy. I guess that's so. I can take care of them just as well too if I go, and better. Only if I should die " there was nothing affected or forlorn in the Cradlebow's tone "I should like to be buried on the hill, with father's folks. You've been across there.
There was nothing either of doubt or arraignment in the Cradlebow's serious eyes. "Besides," he continued; "I've known it all along. See here, teacher!" and he took from his pocket, and carefully unfolded, a sheet of paper against the background of which there lay revealed a dainty star fish, most curiously twisted about with some rare and beautiful sea vine.
He had an air of childish importance, too, as being the first to bear tidings of some strange and dreadful event, and eager to hasten to other doors. "Where's the rest?" he gasped, seeing only me in the room. "You tell 'em, teacher, Lute Cradlebow's drownded!" and the boy disappeared, without another word.
This brought down upon him the derision of the Wallencampers, whose conjugal relations were seldom more delicately implied than by a reference "my woman thar'!" or "my man over thar'!" with an accompanying jerk of the thumb. Lydia, Godfrey Cradlebow's wife, was tall and slight, with dark hair and eyes a perfect face, though worn and sad.
The marvellous light was on his face, too. It fell, in shafts of glory, on the bright foliage of the fallen tree. Grandma was at Godfrey Cradlebow's, but Grandpa Keeler was within the Ark, and Madeline caressing her children with a new fondness. There were a few of the neighbors present; they looked neither frightened nor curious, but ineffably exalted.
"The ultimatum has been reached, at last, in the possessor of a pretty face and a broken fiddle! and dreams for the restoration of the race are to end in a broken-down hovel by the sea, in darning the Cradlebow's socks, and dressing the clams for dinner, while the bucolic George Olver and the versatile Harvey, and all the rest of the awkward, moon-gazing crew, take turns in sitting on the door-step, and dilating on the weather!
And why not?" continued the aggrieved infant, at the same time framing for himself an answer of malicious significance: "Oh, 'cause he's Lute Cradlebow's brother!" Social converse was at its high tide, now, in Wallencamp among the birds in the trees and the fowls in the door-yards, and quite as naturally and harmlessly so, for the most part, I think, among the beings of a superior order.
Sometimes the men sent out great volumes of smoke from their pipes, in the low rooms, that were not delightful; but as far as they knew, they exerted themselves to the utmost, men and women both, to make their homes pleasant and attractive to me. Godfrey Cradlebow's place was as small and poor as any.
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