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Page 18
She sat down on a gray stone, wrapped in her gray shawl, curtained about
by the aspens from the eye of passers on the bridge. She had a fancy for
this place when things went ill with her. She had always borne her
troubles alone, but she must be alone to bear them.
She knew very well that she was tired and nervous that afternoon, and
that, if she could reason quietly about this little neglect of Dick's,
it would cease to annoy her. Indeed, why should she be annoyed? Had he
not done everything for her, been everything to her, for two long, sweet
years? She dropped her head with a shy smile. She was never tired of
living over these two years. She took positive pleasure in recalling the
wretchedness in which they found her, for the sake of their dear relief.
Many a time, sitting with her happy face hidden in his arms, she had
laughed softly, to remember the day on which he came to her. It was at
twilight, and she was tired. Her reels had troubled her all the
afternoon; the overseer was cross; the day was hot and long. Somebody on
the way home had said in passing her: "Look at that girl! I'd kill
myself if I looked like that": it was in a whisper, but she heard it.
All life looked hot and long; the reels would always be out of order;
the overseer would never be kind. Her temples would always throb, and
her back would ache. People would always say, "Look at that girl!"
"Can you direct me to--". She looked up; she had been sitting on the
doorstep with her face in her hands. Dick stood there with his cap off.
He forgot that he was to inquire the way to Newbury Street, when he saw
the tears on her shrunken cheeks. Dick could never bear to see a woman
suffer.
"I wouldn't cry," he said simply, sitting down beside her. Telling a
girl not to cry is an infallible recipe for keeping her at it. What
could the child do, but sob as if her heart would break? Of course he
had the whole story in ten minutes, she his in another ten. It was
common and short enough:--a "Down-East" boy, fresh from his father's
farm, hunting for work and board,--a bit homesick here in the strange,
unhomelike city, it might be, and glad of some one to say so to.
What more natural than that, when her father came out and was pleased
with the lad, there should be no more talk of Newbury Street; that the
little yellow house should become his home; that he should swing the
fantastic gate, and plant the nasturtiums; that his life should grow to
be one with hers and the old man's, his future and theirs unite
unconsciously?
She remembered--it was not exactly pleasant, somehow, to remember it
to-night--just the look of his face when they came into the house that
summer evening, and he for the first time saw what she was, her cape
having fallen off, in the full lamplight. His kindly blue eyes widened
with shocked surprise, and fell; when he raised them, a pity like a
mother's had crept into them; it broadened and brightened as time slid
by, but it never left them.
So you see, after that, life unfolded in a burst of little surprises for
Asenath. If she came home very tired, some one said, "I am sorry." If
she wore a pink ribbon, she heard a whisper, "It suits you." If she
sang a little song, she knew that somebody listened.
"I did not know the world was like this!" cried the girl.
After a time there came a night that he chanced to be out late,--they
had planned an arithmetic lesson together, which he had forgotten,--and
she sat grieving by the kitchen fire.
"You missed me so much then?" he said regretfully, standing with his
hand upon her chair. She was trying to shell some corn; she dropped the
pan, and the yellow kernels rolled away on the floor.
"What should I have if I didn't have you?" she said, and caught her
breath.
The young man paced to the window and back again. The firelight touched
her shoulders, and the sad, white scar.
"You shall have me always, Asenath," he made answer. He took her face
within his hands and kissed it; and so they shelled the corn together,
and nothing more was said about it.
He had spoken this last spring of their marriage; but the girl, like all
girls, was shyly silent, and he had not urged it.
Asenath started from her pleasant dreaming just as the oriflamme was
furling into gray, suddenly conscious that she was not alone. Below her,
quite on the brink of the water, a girl was sitting,--a girl with a
bright plaid shawl, and a nodding red feather in her hat. Her head was
bent, and her hair fell against a profile cut in pink-and-white.
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