United States or Malta ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Suppose it was something which told against her. And why should it not be so? What good could be said? Janway's Mills had borne in upon her the complete sense of her outcast state. While professing a republican independence of New England spirit, the place figuratively touched its forehead to the earth before Miss Starkweather.
The great world was not far from Janway's Mills, but they did not touch each other.
If a female creature at the Mills broke the great social law, there was no leaning towards the weakness of pity for her, Janway's was not sufficiently developed, mentally, to deal with gradations or analysis of causes and impelling powers.
It was in the early spring, just before the child had gone to Boston to begin her art lessons. She had come to Janway's Mills to see a poor woman who had worked for her mother. The woman lived in the house in which Susan had her bare room. She began to talk about the girl half fretfully, half contemptuously.
Then she was very sick and fainted and had to be taken home trembling so that she could scarcely crawl as she walked, with great tears dropping down her cold face. Janway's Mills knew well enough after this that Jack Williams had deserted her, and had no hesitation in suggesting a reason for his defection. The months which followed were filled with the torments of a squalid Inferno.
She had been rather pretty, but the colour and freshness were gone from her face and there were premature lines of pain and misery marking it here and there. Baird moved a chair near her. "Sit down," he said. "Have you walked all the way from Janway's Mills?" She started a little and gave him a look, half wonder, half relief, and then fell to twisting the fringe of her poor shawl again.
Even sinners, at Janway's Mills, were primitive and limited in outlook. They did not excuse themselves with specious argument for their crimes of neglecting church-going, using bad language, hanging about bar-rooms, and loose living. They were not brilliant wrongdoers and made no attempt at defending themselves or pretending that they did not know they were going to perdition.
"She did not suffer," said Latimer. "I never saw nothin' of her after the last day she came to Janway's Mills," the girl began. Latimer lifted his eyes suddenly. "She went to the Mills?" he exclaimed. "Yes," she answered, her voice shaking. "I guess she never told. After that first night she stood by me. No one else did. Seemed like other folks thought I'd poison 'em.
Word Of The Day