Blue Ridge Mountains -- Juvenile fiction; North Carolina -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Juvenile fiction
In the early afternoon I visited two of the houses to which I was to go,
and arranged about the number and kinds of chairs the men were to
furnish. I drew up contracts for them to sign, for I thought that would
be businesslike. Anyway, it pleased me to do it, and I think the
chair-makers liked it too. It gave both of us a nice efficient feeling.
They wanted me to stay at the last house I visited, and there was such a
darling little baby there that I almost did, but I decided that I’d
better be getting on and try to reach the Triller’s before sundown.
Paprika was getting a bit fagged, but I know how quickly she rests up, so
I hurried her along, getting, I confess, just a trifle worried as I found
myself on strange roads, with the mist settling all about me.
It was very still. The mist seemed to muffle everything. No birds were
singing, and I could not hear any creature in the woods, nor any falling
water, and as there was no wind, the trees were motionless. Everything
rested under a gray enchantment, and it gave me a very strange feeling.
Yet I liked it. I felt as if something were going to happen.
And something did. But, Carin, it was not in the least what I would have
imagined or wished for. It was as different as it could possibly be.
I have said that everything was very still—Oh, perfectly still. Then
came a noise from afar, like a gathering wind, yet not a leaf stirred on
the trees. The sound grew louder and louder. It seemed like a tempest.
I trembled and so did Paprika. A moment later around the turn of the
gray road came a sort of monster—an awful thing, all snout and flaming
eyes. I knew in one terrible second what it was, of course.
An automobile—the first I ever had seen, face to face and eye to eye.
Paprika, who had not looked at pictures to any great extent—except,
perhaps, those on bill boards—did not know at all what it was. She gave
one wild scream like a wounded horse and dashed straight up the bank.
Then she looked back over her shoulder as if doubting her senses, saw the
horrible thing again, heard its roaring and snuffling, and plunged on.
There in the thick of the woods, with the mist still gathering, I could
not see how to guide her, and anyway, she was beyond management. So, in
a moment more I felt myself—I who never had been thrown in my life—going
over her head.
And that was all, Carin dear, for four days, so they tell me. Four days.
You will wonder where I was when I opened my eyes. This letter paper
will tell you. I was, and I am, at “Little Windows,” which is the name,
as I have already explained, of a cottage on the top of Mount Hebron. Of
course I can not say for sure that it is the loveliest place in the
world, for I have seen but few places, not being like you, Carin,
darling, forever going to beautiful spots. But at any rate it is lovely
beyond my power to describe, with its great valleys and gulches, and its
near acquaintance with stars and sun risings and moon settings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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