Arizona -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Religious fiction; Teachers -- Fiction
The minister tapped at her door a little later and offered his services
in opening her box and unstrapping her trunks; but she told him Bud had
already performed that service for her, and thanked him with a finality
that forbade him to linger. She half hoped he heard the vicious little
click with which she locked the door after him, and then wondered if she
were wicked to feel that way. But all such compunctions were presently
forgotten in the work of making over her room.
The trunks, after they were unpacked and repacked with the things she
would not need at once, were disposed in front of the two windows with
which the ugly little room was blessed. She covered them with two Bagdad
rugs, relics of her college days, and piled several college pillows from
the packing-box on each, which made the room instantly assume a homelike
air. Then out of the box came other things. Framed pictures of home
scenes, college friends and places, pennants, and flags from football,
baseball, and basket-ball games she had attended; photographs; a few
prints of rare paintings simply framed; a roll of rose-bordered white
scrim like her curtains at home, wherewith she transformed the
blue-shaded windows and the stiff little wooden rocker, and even made a
valance and bed-cover over pink cambric for her bed. The bureau and
wash-stand were given pink and white covers, and the ugly walls
literally disappeared beneath pictures, pennants, banners, and symbols.
When Bud came up to call her to dinner she flung the door open, and he
paused in wide-eyed amazement over the transformation. His eyes kindled
at a pair of golf-sticks, a hockey-stick, a tennis-racket, and a big
basket-ball in the corner; and his whole look of surprise was so
ridiculous that she had to laugh. He looked as if a miracle had been
performed on the room, and actually stepped back into the hall to get
his breath and be sure he was still in his father's house.
"I want you to come in and see all my pictures and get acquainted with
my friends when you have time," she said. "I wonder if you could make
some more shelves for my books and help me unpack and set them up?"
"Sure!" gasped Bud, heartily, albeit with awe. She hadn't asked the
minister; she had asked _him_--_Bud!_ Just a boy! He looked around the
room with anticipation. What wonder and delight he would have looking at
all those things!
Then Cap stepped into the middle of the room as if he belonged, mouth
open, tongue lolling, smiling and panting a hearty approval, as he
looked about at the strangeness for all the world as a human being might
have done. It was plain he was pleased with the change.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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