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Page 87
It was about time for the four-o'clock train, then.
Sharley, at the cost of half a sugar-bowl (never mind syntax; you know I
mean the sugar, not the glass), had enticed Moppet to betake himself out
of sight and out of mind till somebody should signify a desire for his
engaging presence; had steered clear of Nate and Methuselah, and was
standing now alone on the back doorsteps opposite the chaise-house. One
could see a variety of things from those doorsteps,--the chaise-house,
for instance, with the old, solid, square-built wagon rolled into it
(Sharley passed many a long "mending morning" stowed in among the
cushions of that old wagon); the great sweet-kept barn, where the sun
stole in warm at the chinks and filtered through the hay; the well-curb
folded in by a shadow; the wood-pile, and the chickens, and the
kitchen-garden; a little slope, too, with a maple on it and shades of
brown and gold upon the grass; brown and golden tints across the hills,
and a sky of blue and gold to dazzle one. Then there was a flock of
robins dipping southward. There was also the railroad.
Sharley may have had her dim consciousness of the cosey barn and
chicken's chirp, of brown and gold and blue and dazzle and glory; but
you don't suppose _that_ was what she had outgeneralled Moppet and
stolen the march upon Nate and Methuselah for. The truth is, that the
child had need of none of these things--neither skies nor dazzle nor
glory--that golden autumn afternoon. Had the railroad bounded the
universe just then, she would have been content. For Sharley was only a
girl,--a very young, not very happy, little girl,--and Halcombe Dike was
coming home to spend the Sunday.
Halcombe Dike,--her old friend Halcombe Dike. She said the words over,
apologizing a bit to herself for being there to watch that railroad. Hal
used to be good to her when she was bothered with the children and more
than half tired of life. "Keep up good courage, Sharley," he would say.
For the long summer he had not been here to say it. And to-night he
would be here. To-night--to-night! Why should not one be glad when one's
old friends come back?
Mrs. Guest, peering through the pantry window, observed--and observed
with some motherly displeasure, which she would have expressed had it
not been too much trouble to open the window--that Sharley had put on
her barbe,--that black barbe with the pink watered ribbons run through
it. So extravagant in Sharley! Sharley would fain have been so
extravagant as to put on her pink muslin too this afternoon; she had
been more than half inclined to cry because she could not; but as it was
not orthodox in Green Valley to wear one's "best clothes" on week-days,
except at picnics or prayer-meetings, she had submitted, sighing, to her
sprigged calico. It would have been worth while, though, to have seen
her half an hour ago up in her room under the eaves, considering the
question; she standing there with the sleeves of her dressing-sack
fallen away from her pink, bare arms, and the hair clinging loose and
moist to her bare white neck; to see her smooth the shimmering
folds,--there were rose-buds on that muslin,--and look and long, hang it
up, and turn away. Why could there not be a little more rose-bud and
shimmer in people's lives! "Seems to me it's all calico!" cried Sharley.
Then to see her overturning her ribbon-box! Nobody but a girl knows how
girls dream over their ribbons.
"He is coming!" whispered Sharley to the little bright barbe, and to the
little bright face that flushed and fluttered at her in the glass,--"He
is coming!"
Sharley looked well, waiting there in the calico and lace upon the
doorstep. It is not everybody who would look well in calico and lace;
yet if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how pretty Sharley is,
or if she is pretty at all. I have a memory of soft hair--brown, I
think--and wistful eyes; and that I never saw her without a desire to
stroke her, and make her pur as I would a kitten.
How stiff and stark and black the railroad lay on its yellow ridge!
Sharley drew her breath when the sudden four-o'clock whistle smote the
air, and a faint, far trail of smoke puffed through the woods, and wound
over the barren outline.
Her mother, seeing her steal away through the kitchen-garden, and down
the slope, called after her:--
"Charlotte! going to walk? I wish you'd let the baby go too. Well, she
doesn't hear!"
I will not assert that Sharley did not hear. To be frank, she was rather
tired of that baby.
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