United States or Niue ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Ricker and Kitton had included me on her list, accredited, no doubt, because a few weeks earlier she had helped me to settle my belongings in Oldmoxon house, and since then had twice swept for me, and was to come in a day or two to do so again.
Indeed, all Friendship knew it and spoke of it with no possibility of gossip or speculation, but with a kind of genius for consideration. I did not know, however, that it was of this that Liddy meant to speak, for she began her story far afield, with some talk of Oldmoxon house, in which I lived, and of its former tenants.
An' when it come out that the dyin' woman hadn't seen Calvert Oldmoxon for thirty years an' didn't know where he was, an' that the child was an orphan an' would go to collateral kin or some such folks, Calliope plumps out to her to give her the child. The forgiveness Calliope sort o' took for granted like you will as you get older. An' Mis' Oldmoxon seemed real willin' she should have him.
For when you dress up, you can't set home. An' then she says slow an' you could 'a' knocked me over while I listened: "'I've been thinkin', she says, 'that we ought to go up to Oldmoxon house an see that sick person. "'Calliope! I says, 'for the land. You don't want to be refused in! "'I don't know as I do an' I don't know but I do, she answers me.
With the days the plans for the Proudfit party or rather the plans of the Proudfit guests went merrily forward. It was, they said, like "in the Oldmoxon days," when the house in which I was now living had been the Friendship fairyland. Some take their parties solemnly, some joyously, some feverishly; but Friendship takes them vitally, as it takes a project or the breath of being.
An' before I knew it, I was out on Daphne Street in the moonlight headin' for Oldmoxon house here that no foot in Friendship had stepped or set inside of in 'most six months. "'They won't let us in, I says, pos'tive. "'Well, Calliope says, 'seems though I'd like to walk up there a night like this, anyway.
"Handsome as Calvert Oldmoxon," the older ones in Friendship were accustomed to say, save Calliope, whom I had never heard say that, but I myself, if I had not had my simile already selected, would have said "as Abel Halsey." If a god were human, I think that Abel would have been very like a god. And to this opinion his experiences were continually bearing witness.
We were crossing the lawn to Oldmoxon House when I said to Calliope what it had been decided that day that I should say: "Calliope," I asked, "could you be ready in a month or two to leave Friendship for good, and come to us in town, and live with us for always?" She looked up at one and the other of us, with her little embarrassed laugh. "You're makin' fun o' me," she said.
"An' at that the man put his hands on his knees an' leaned sort o' hunchin' forward. "'Calliope! he says. "It was him, sure enough Calvert Oldmoxon. Same big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' kind o' crooked frown. His hair was gray, an' so was his pointed beard, an' he was crool thin. But I'd 'a' known him anywheres. "Calliope, she just stood still.
Calliope never was one to let on. But I s'pose seein' that little boy there at the hotel look so much like him was kind o' unbalancin'. So what does she do when Mis' Oldmoxon was cryin' about forgiveness but up an' ask her what was goin' to be done with the boy after she was dead.
Word Of The Day