A Touch of Sun, and Other StoriesFoote, Mary Hallock
General
A Touch of Sun, and Other Stories
Foote, Mary Hallock
United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
Kitty asks, letting her eyelashes fall on her sun-flushed cheeks. Her face,
as I saw it, sitting behind her in the grass, was so pretty--upside down
like the reflection of the waterfall, its colors all the more wonderfully
blended.
We did not all speak at once. Then Harshaw said, to break the silence, "I
will read it to you, if you don't mind."
"Oh, have you the book?" Kitty asked in surprise.
He went to his tent and returned with _a_ book, and sitting on the grass
where she could hear but could not see him, he began. I trembled for him;
but before he had got to the second stanza I was relieved: he could read
aloud.
"Now _there_ is a man one could live on a Snake River ranch with," I felt
like saying to Kitty. Not that I am sure that I want her to.
When he had finished,
"O rest ye, brother mariners; we will not wander more!"
Tom remarked, after a suitable silence, that it was all well enough for
Harshaw, who would be in London in six weeks, to say, "We will not wander
more!" But how about the rest of us?
Kitty sat straight up at that.
"Will Mr. Harshaw be in London six weeks from now?" The question was almost
a cry.
"Will you?" she demanded, turning upon him as if this was the last injury
he could do her.
"I suppose so," he said.
"And you will see my mother, and all of them?"
"I think so--if you wish."
She rose up, as if she could bear no more. Harshaw waited an instant, and
then followed her; but she motioned him back, and went away to have it out
with herself alone.
I took up the book Harshaw had left on the grass. It was "Copp's
Manual"--"For the use of Prospectors," etc.
* * * * *
After all, it is not so sure that Harshaw will go to London. There has been
an engineer on the ground since last summer, when all this water was free.
He has located a vast deal of it, perhaps the whole. Tom says he can hold
only just as much as he can use; I hope there will be no difference of
opinion on that point. There generally is a difference of opinion on points
of location when the thing located is proved to have any value. The prior
locator has gone East, they tell us at the ranch, on a business visit,
presumably to raise capital for his scheme; which, as I understand it,
is to force the water of the springs up on the dry plains above, for
irrigation (the fetich of the country), by means of a pneumatic pumping
arrangement. His ladders and pipes, and all his hopeful apparatus, are
clinging now like cobwebs to the face of the bluff, against that flashing,
creaming broadside of the springs at their greatest height and fall. I was
pitying the poor man and his folly, but Tom says the plan is perfectly
feasible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account