United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His father went down to Mishaumok on one of the three days, and left him in charge at the mills; and there were people to see, and arrangements to make; but some part of each day he did manage to devote to Faith, and they had walking and driving together, and every night Paul stayed to tea at Cross Corners. On the last evening, they sat together, by the hillside door, in the summer parlor.
She could only sitting there in her chamber window with the blood tingling to the hair upon her temples, as if from every neighboring window of the clustering houses about her, eyes could overlook and read what she was reading now "wish that Saidie would not write such things as that!" For all that, it was one pleasant thing Faith would have to lose in leaving Mishaumok.
It was very likely they would all go out in October. Paul's name was never mentioned. Faith realized, painfully, how her little hand had been upon the motive power of much that was all ended, now. Two eminent medical men had been summoned from Mishaumok, and had held consultation with Dr. Wasgatt upon Miss Henderson's case.
Philip had entered the family, petted her in the old, graceful, gracious fashion; and Margaret loved her, simply, and from her heart. With Paul himself, it had not been as in the days of bouquets, and "Germans," and bridal association in Mishaumok. They were all living and enjoying together a beautiful idyl. Nothing seemed special nothing was embarrassing.
Bridget Foye sat at her apple stand in the cheery morning sunlight, red cheeks and russets ranged fair and tempting before her, and a pile of roasted peanuts, and one of delicate molasses candy, such as nobody but she knew how to make, at either end of the board. Bridget Foye was the tidiest, kindliest, merriest apple woman in all Mishaumok.
Yes I will take a bit of chicken, I think; and what have you there that's hot?" as the maid came in with the chocolate pot, in answer to Faith's ring of the bell. "Ah, yes! Chocolate! I missed my tea, somehow, to-night." The "somehow" had been in his kindly quest of the best nurse in Mishaumok. "Sit down, Miss Sampson. Let me help you to a scrap of cold chicken. What? Drumstick!
For years afterwards perhaps for all her life Faith couldn't smell heliotrope, and geranium, and orange flowers, without floating back, momentarily, into the dream of those few, enchanted days! She stayed in Mishaumok a little beyond the limit she had fixed for herself, to go, with the others, on board the steamer at the time of her sailing, and see the gay party off.
It was a great deal to think of, certainly; but it was worth thinking of, too. James had married in San Francisco, had a pleasant home there, and was prospering. Many old business friends had gone from Mishaumok, in the years when the great flood of enterprise set westward across the continent, and were building up name and influence in the Golden Land.
Everybody promised to come as far as Kinnicutt "some time" to see them; the good-bys were all said at last; the city cook had departed, and a woman had been taken in her place who "had no objections to the country"; and on one of the last bright days of May they skimmed, steam-sped, over the intervening country between the brick-and-stone-encrusted hills of Mishaumok and the fair meadow reaches of Kinnicutt; and so disappeared out of the places that had known them so long, and could yet, alas! do so exceedingly well without them.
Lying there, on the cool, springy cushions of her couch turning the fresh-cut leaves of the August Mishaumok she forgot the wheels and the spindles the hot mills, and the ceaseless whir. Just at that moment of her utter comfort and content, a young factory girl dropped, fainting, in the dizzy heat, before her loom.
Word Of The Day