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Updated: June 22, 2025
Sometimes Jane said when she kissed Draxy, at the door of her little room, "Why don't you kiss your pa for good-night?" "I kissed father before you waked up, ma," was always Draxy's quiet answer. And so the years went on. There was much discomfort, much deprivation in Reuben Miller's house.
It was on a clear cold morning in January that Draxy set out. It was the second journey of her life, and she was alone for the first time; but she felt no more fear than if she had been a sparrow winging its way through a new field.
There was deep down in the patient woman's heart, a latent pride which was grievously touched. Reuben turned to Draxy; her lips were parted; her cheeks were flushed; her eyes glowed. "Oh, father, the sea!" she exclaimed. This was her first thought; but in a second more she added, "How kind, how good of Aunt Emma's husband!" "Would you like to go, my daughter?" said Reuben, earnestly.
Accusations of cheating and lying were freely bandied, and Deacon Plummer and George Thayer had nearly come to blows on the steps of the Town House, at high noon, just as the school-children were going home. Later in the afternoon there had been a renewal of the contest in the village store, and it had culminated in a fight, part of which Draxy herself had chanced to see.
Hang me if I don't; jump in!" and in one minute more Draxy was whirling out of the dark station into the broad sunlight, which dazzled her. When the conductor first came through the car he saw that Draxy had been crying. "Do her good," he thought to himself; "it always does do women good; but I'll be bound she wouldn't ha' cried if I'd left her."
Draxy was not wont to allude to the lost and irrecoverable joys. But he only sighed. "Read this letter, father dear," said Draxy, hurriedly pushing it into his hand; "I wrote up to a good old minister to find out, and here's his answer." Reuben looked bewildered. Draxy's words did not make themselves clear. But the first words of Elder Kinney's letter did. The paper fell from his hands.
The other children called him "pa," as was the universal custom in the village. But Draxy even in her babyhood had never once used the word. Until she was seven or eight years old she called him "Farver;" after that, always "father dear." Then Reuben would wake Jane up, sighing usually, "Poor mother, how tired she is!"
When the family were all gathered together in the evening, and Draxy had told the story of her adventures, Reuben and Captain Melville examined the deed together. It was apparently a good clear title; it was of three hundred acres of land. Reuben groaned, "Oh, how I should like to see land by the acre once more." Draxy's face turned scarlet, and she locked and unlocked her hands, but said nothing.
It was song which Draxy supplied to these people's lives. Not often in verse, in sound, in any shape that could be measured, but in spirit. She vivified their every sense of beauty, moral and physical. She opened their eyes to joy; she revealed to them the sacredness and delight of common things; she made their hearts sing. But she was to do more yet for these men and women.
He glanced carelessly at it. "No, no," said he; "this is the express; don't stop there. You must wait till the afternoon accommodation." "But what time will that train get there?" said Draxy, turning pale. "About ten o'clock, if it's on time," said the conductor, walking away.
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