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Updated: May 12, 2025
He said that one day, when the troubles between the Colonies and the mother-country first broke out, as he, a boy of fifteen, was pitching hay out of a cart, one Doane, an old Tory, who was talking with his father, a good Whig, said to him, "Why, Uncle Bill, you might as well undertake to pitch that pond into the ocean with a pitchfork as for the Colonies to undertake to gain their independence."
Gray will be just the color for you; and with a touch of blue, and your white hair Oh, you'll be lovely, Miss Doane." Again the willing salesladies were given their instructions, and gray dresses and gray suits were placed before her. Drusilla passed over the suits with hardly a look, but fingered lovingly the soft crepes and chiffons. "I don't like the heavy things," she said.
You have passed your life in toil, trying to earn your daily bread, and have found yourself nearing the end of this footless journey that we call life, alone and friendless. I have passed my days in toil also, and find myself, at the end, as much alone and friendless as is the loneliest inmate of the Doane home. I have had bread, yes; and often eaten it in bitterness.
To her amazement the next Sunday there was spread before her the paper with great headlines: MISS DRUSILLA DOANE, OUR NEWEST MILLIONAIRE. There was the picture of the Doane home for old ladies; there were pictures of the home at Brookvale taken from many angles, pictures of the garden, the conservatories; and in the middle of the page there was Drusilla herself, sitting in the high-backed chair.
She and Mr. Doane shook hands, but the young man felt very much like a thief, and a particularly mean sort of thief, as young men are likely to feel under such circumstances. Farewells were harder to say than usual, although Gertrude tried her best to seem cheerful, and the captain swallowed the lump in his throat and smiled and joked in a ghastly fashion all through the ceremony.
Nor was it at all evident to his acquaintances that there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and once, when Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged, Babbitt snorted, "Oh, rats, he's not so bad."
In all probability no one clearly realized the legal status of the muskets, but all supposed them already to belong to the State that was threatening to use them. Charles Doane, instructed to take the steps necessary to their capture, called to him the chief of the harbour police. "Have you a small vessel ready for immediate service?" he asked this man. "Yes, a sloop, at the foot of this street."
"What makes you ask that?" he demanded. "Oh, nothing much. She seems changed, that's all. She used to be so full of spirits, and so bright and lively. Now she is quiet and doesn't talk much. Looks thinner, too, and as if something was troubling her. Perhaps it is my imagination. When's John Doane coming down? 'Most time for him to be spending a Sunday with you, ain't it?
But, lass, 'twas done o' purpose. That was the one man in all the parish that would ha' risked his neck to let me free. 'Twas Lancy Doane, who's give me as many beatings in his time as I him. We were always getting foul one o' t'other since I was big enough to shy a bit of turf at him across a dyke, and there isn't a spot on's body that I haven't hit, nor one on mine that he hasn't mauled.
When her young mistress ceased speaking she shook her head slowly. "Well," she observed, "it looks some like hoppin' out of the fryin' pan into the fire, but, even if it turns out that way, perhaps it's just as well to be roasted as fried. Humph! no, 'twon't do to tell anybody. I shan't, and you mustn't." "I don't intend to." "Um! Not even John Doane?"
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