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Page 9
"Jack went on to the mines next day, and after that everything was
in a whirl till we were moved and settled, for there was so much to
do, packing the furniture to be shipped, and after we got to the
new house unpacking again and shifting things around till it got
all liveable and homelike. By that time it was time for me to get
my things together and go down to Phoenix to meet the people who
had offered to take me under their wing on their way back East.
Judge and Mrs. Stockton brought me. I must remember the date of
Mrs. Stockton's birthday, November the fourth, and send her one of
those bead purses. She admired the one she saw me making so much
that I know she would like it, and she certainly was an angel to me
on the trip. It seems to me it's my luck to meet nice people
everywhere I go.
"I'm not going to wait till the last Thursday in November for my
Thanksgiving Day. I've got seven good reasons for thanksgiving this
very minute. First, we got here without a wreck. Second, the ribbon
on my hat doesn't show a single spot, after all the hard shower
that we got caught in, that I thought had ruined it. Third, I
_think_ I impressed Hawkins as I hoped to, even if I was a bit
nervous. Fourth, while my introduction to Madam Chartley was
horribly mortifying, all's well that ends well, and she didn't lay
it up against me. I think she must have taken quite a fancy to me
instead or she wouldn't have given me my fifth and greatest reason
for thankfulness, the privilege of occupying Lloyd's old room.
Maybe I oughtn't to put that as the greatest reason, for of course
it's greater just to be here at all, and seventh, I'll never get
done being thankful that I've got Jack for a brother. That really
is the best of all, and I'm going to make so much out of my
opportunities this year, that he'll feel repaid for all he's done
for me, and be glad and proud that he could do it."
Filling another page with an account of her journey and her impressions
of the place, Mary closed her journal with a sigh of relief that the
long-neglected entry had been made. Then she leaned back on the rustic
bench and gave herself up to the enjoyment of her surroundings. The
fountain splashed softly. A lazy breeze stirred the vines, and fanned
her face. Far below, the shining Potomac took its slow way to the sea
between its lines of drooping willows. The calm and repose of the
stately old place seemed to steal in on her soul not only through eye
and ear and sense of touch, but at every pore.
"It's the strangest thing," she mused. "I must be a sort of chameleon,
the way I change with my surroundings. It doesn't seem possible that
only last week I was scrambling around with my head tied up in a towel,
scrubbing and cleaning and dragging furniture around at a break-neck
speed. I could almost believe I've never done anything all my life but
trail around this garden at my elegant leisure like some fine
lady-in-waiting."
There was time for a stroll down to the river before the falling
twilight recalled her to the house. As she went down the flight of
marble steps it was with the self-conscious feeling that she was a girl
in a play, and this was one of the scenes in Act I. She had seen a
setting like this on a stage one time, when a beautiful lady trailed
down the steps of a Venetian palace to the gondola waiting in the lagoon
below. To be sure Mary's dress did not trail, and she was not tall and
willowy outwardly, but it made no difference as long as she could _feel_
that she was. For a long time she walked slowly back and forth along the
river path, pausing now and then to look up at the great castle-like
building above her. She had never seen one before so suggestive of
old-world grandeur. Already it was giving her more than she would find
inside in its text-books. Peculiarly susceptible to surroundings, she
unconsciously held herself more erect, as if such a stately habitation
demanded it of her. And when she climbed the steps again, with it
looming up before her in the red afterglow, the dignity and repose of
its lines, from its massive portal to its highest turret, awakened a
response in her beauty-loving little soul that thrilled her like music.
She went softly through the great door and up the stair-case, pausing
for a moment on the landing to look at the coat-of-arms in the stained
glass window. It was a copy of the window in the old ancestral castle in
England, that belonged to Madam Chartley's family. Mary already knew the
story of its traditional founder, the first Edryn who had won his
knighthood in valiant deeds for King Arthur. In the dim light the
coat-of-arms gleamed like jewels in an amber setting, and the heart in
the crest, the heart out of which rose a mailed hand grasping a spear,
was like a great ruby.
"I keep the tryste," whispered Mary, reading the motto of the scroll
underneath. "No wonder Madam Chartley grew up to be so patrician.
Anybody might with a window like that in the house."
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