Arizona -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Religious fiction; Teachers -- Fiction
Margaret smiled. "It is a picture, isn't it? Just look at that silver
light over the purple place. Isn't it wonderful? I like to think it's
mine--my mountain. And yet the beautiful thing about it is that it's
just as much yours, too. It will make a picture of itself framed in your
bunk-house window if you let it. Try it. You just need to let it."
Mom Wallis looked at her wonderingly. "Do you mean," she said, studying
the girl's lovely face, "that ef I should wash them there bunk-house
winders, an' string up some posy caliker, an' stuff a chair, an' have a
pin-cushion, I could make that there mounting come in an' set fer me
like a picter the way it does here fer you?"
"Yes, that's what I mean," said Margaret, softly, marveling how the
uncouth woman had caught the thought. "That's exactly what I mean. God's
gifts will be as much to us as we will let them, always. Try it and
see."
Mom Wallis stood for some minutes looking out reflectively at the
mountain. "Wal, mebbe I'll try it!" she said, and turned back to survey
the room again.
And now the mirror caught her eye, and she saw herself, a strange self
in a soft white collar, and went up to get a nearer view, laying a
toil-worn finger on the lace and looking half embarrassed at sight of
her own face.
"It's a real purty collar," she said, softly, with a choke in her voice.
"It's too purty fer me. I told him so, but he said as how you wanted I
should dress up every night fer supper in it. It's 'most as strange as
havin' a mounting come an' live with you, to wear a collar like
that--me!"
Margaret's eyes were suddenly bright with tears. Who would have
suspected Mom Wallis of having poetry in her nature? Then, as if her
thoughts anticipated the question in Margaret's mind, Mom Wallis went
on:
"He brang me your little book," she said. "I ain't goin' to say thank
yeh, it ain't a big-'nuf word. An' he read me the poetry words it says.
I got it wropped in a hankercher on the top o' the beam over my bed. I'm
goin' to have it buried with me when I die. Oh, I _read_ it. I couldn't
make much out of it, but I read the words thorough. An' then _he_ read
'em--the Kid did. He reads just beautiful. He's got education, he has.
He read it, and he talked a lot about it. Was this what you mean? Was it
that we ain't really growin' old at all, we're jest goin' on, _gettin_'
there, if we go right? Did you mean you think Him as planned it all
wanted some old woman right thar in the bunk-house, an' it's _me_? Did
you mean there was agoin' to be a chanct fer me to be young an'
beautiful somewheres in creation yit, 'fore I git through?"
The old woman had turned around from looking into the mirror and was
facing her hostess. Her eyes were very bright; her cheeks had taken on
an excited flush, and her knotted hands were clutching the bureau. She
looked into Margaret's eyes earnestly, as though her very life depended
upon the answer; and Margaret, with a great leap of her heart, smiled
and answered:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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