A Cry in the WildernessWaller, Mary E. (Mary Ella)
General
A Cry in the Wilderness
Waller, Mary E. (Mary Ella)
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Québec (Province) -- Fiction
"Well, you 'll get it just as soon as the Doctor can find it; like
enough it's locked up in some Safe Deposit with his papers; you mustn't
forget it's been nearly twenty-six years since he's had it.--I can't
for the life of me think of that name."
"Never mind that now; tell me about the place. Where is it? Who are
the people? Or is there only one--it said 'an elderly Scotchwoman'.
Do you know her?"
"No, my dear, I don't know any one of them, and Doctor Rugvie does n't
mean I should; that's where he trusts me. I can tell you where the
place is: Lamoral, Province of Quebec; more 'n that I don't know."
"But," I spoke half in protest, "does n't Doctor Rugvie think that any
one taking the position ought to know beforehand where she is going and
whom she 's going to live with?"
"He might tell you if he was here himself, and then again he mightn't.
You see it's this way: he trusts me to use my common sense in accepting
an applicant, and he expects the applicant to trust his name for
reference to go to the end of the world if he sends her there, without
asking questions."
"Oh, the old tyrant!" I laughed a little. "What does he pay?" was my
next question.
"Doctor Rugvie! You think _he_ pays? Good gracious, child, you _are_
on the wrong track."
"Then put me on the right one, please." I laid my hand on the hard
roughened one.
"I s'pose I might as well; I don't believe the Doctor would mind."
"Of course he would n't." I spoke with a fine, assumed assurance.
Delia Beaseley smiled.
"You know I told you that young feller who come here went away without
saying so much as 'Thank you'?"
I merely nodded in reply. That question suddenly quenched all the new
hope of a new life in me.
"Along the first of the New Year, that was twenty-five years ago, I got
a draft by mail from a national bank in this city; the draft was on
that bank; it was for five hundred dollars. And ever since, in
December, I have had a check for one hundred in the same way. I always
get Doctor Rugvie to cash them for me, and he says no questions are
answered; after the first year he did n't ask any. The Doctor 's in
the same boat. He 's got a draft on that same bank for five hundred
dollars every year for the last twenty-five years. He says it's
conscience money; and he feels just as I do, that it comes either from
the man who claimed to be the woman's husband, or from that other she
was married to according to the certificate.--I can't think of that
name!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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