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Updated: May 12, 2025
The front gate screaked, a slow, timid, almost furtive sort of screak, and then banged suddenly shut as though it despaired of further concealment. Mary Louise gathered her sewing to her, rose to her feet, and looked out. It was raining.
She made it screak; she made it wail; she set her own teeth on edge with the horrid discords she drew from it. It crowed like a cock twenty-five times running, with an interval of half a minute between each crow. It brayed like two asses on a common, one answering the other from a considerable distance.
"Just walk around the tree once," said the mother, "an' you'll scare him to death. Why don't ye grease your boots?" "'Fraid it'll take the screak out of 'em," said Paul, looking down thoughtfully at his own pair. "Well," said she, "you'll have me treed if you keep on. No hunter would have boots like that. A loud foot makes a still gun."
She did not run against chairs nor move a stool so that the legs emitted a "screak" of agony, and she could sit still for an hour at a time if she had a book. Of course, being a girl she ought to sew instead. It was getting quite dusky. Uncle Winthrop came and stirred the fire and put on a pine log, then drew up his chair. "Put away your book, Doris. You will try your eyes."
And the song came suddenly to an end and he heard a gentle little "Hush," and then a sigh, and then silence. Slowly he backed away on tiptoe from the door. He had barely gained the security of the front room somehow he felt it as security when he heard the gate screak and, turning suddenly, saw a man dart like a shadow around the side of the house.
Then only the distant rumble of the Elevated Railroad could be heard occasionally, or the far, seaward whistle of some steamer, or the scrape and screak of a street-car. And so night settled upon the flat.
There was quite an expanse of greening lawn in front and to the south, whereon stood the summerhouse, and a tangle of rose bushes hid the decaying board fence which marked the southern boundary. Along the brick sidewalk stretched a line of ageing wooden pickets and about midway in their extent hung the wooden gate with the screak.
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