A Girl of VirginiaThruston, Lucy M. (Lucy Meacham)
General
A Girl of Virginia
Thruston, Lucy M. (Lucy Meacham)
Virginia -- Fiction
It would be several days he had said, before he could come to town
again; it was ten. The Sabbath had been promised to a neighbor back in
the country. The ploughing took longer than he thought. A field which
had been allowed to run to waste must be burned over; and while the
weather held fair and windless, the undergrowth encroaching from the
woodland must be cut and burned. The fodder was not yet stacked, and all
the work was pressing upon him. Good hard work in the clear, pure air,
sound sleep, and contented thoughts made the days speed by.
When the Sabbath, his holiday, came again, he was abroad in the red
frosty dawn, hurrying from stable to breakfast and away. When he rode
into town he still had time to go up to the University before the
service. He left his horse at the stable and hastened up Main street.
The town was yet quiet. On the bridge above the railroad he paused a
second looking down at the station below. A train was pulling out. The
shriek of the locomotive echoed shrilly among the hills, the smoke hung
in billowy clouds close about the smoke-stack, and the tops of the
coaches gliding away were white and glistering with frost. Edward had a
comfortable feeling of home and cheer as, standing there, he looked down
and beyond on spires and housetops and chimney-tops smoke-wreathed; but
as he turned to hasten on, he saw, coming slowly along the platform, the
professor. Edward hurried back to the flight of steps sunk in the
hillside.
The very look of Mr. Holloway gave him a feeling of dismay. His coat
collar was turned high about his face, and the pallor of his clear white
skin, bitten into purple and red by the chill of the morning, showed
clearly framed against it and by his thick black hair streaked with
gray. His dark eyes looked solemnly thoughtful. He had an air altogether
desolate and distraught. Edward called to him. He started, looked up,
and brightened wonderfully.
"Ah! I am glad to see you." He had reached the head of the stairway.
"Frances," he added dolefully, "has gone away; I have just been to see
her off."
Fool! While he had been standing there happy with dreaming of seeing
her, she had been slipping away from him in the glistening coaches he
had watched so idly.
He had not a word to say.
"Don't know what possessed her. It was a sudden fancy. Last night she
took it into her head all at once. It isn't like Frances to do such
things! She was going this morning, she said, and she had us up by
daybreak; she was bent on making this early train."
"Where has she gone?" asked Edward, dully.
"Keswick! Her cousin, you know; she can telephone to the store near his
farm and have them send out for her. But," he repeated, "I can't think
what possessed her."
Had the professor been able to think, to know what sent his daughter
running away from him, his wrath had been hard for some one that day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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