Faith Gartney's GirlhoodWhitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
General
Faith Gartney's Girlhood
Whitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
Teenage girls -- Juvenile fiction
Very little likelihood there has ever seemed for any great joy to get
into such a life as this has been, that began, or at least has its
earliest memory and association, in the old poorhouse at Stonebury.
A child she was, of five years, when she was taken in there with her
old, crippled grandmother.
Peter McWhirk was picked up dead, from the graveled drive of a
gentleman's place, where he had been trimming the high trees that shaded
it. An unsound limb--a heedless movement--and Peter went straight down,
thirty feet, and out of life. Out of life, where he had a trim,
comfortable young wife--one happy little child, for whom skies were as
blue, and grass as green, and buttercups as golden as for the little
heiress of Elm Hill, who was riding over the lawn in her basket wagon,
when Peter met his death there--the hope, also, of another that was to
come.
Rosa McWhirk and her baby of a day old were buried the week after,
together; and then there was nothing left for Glory and her helpless
grandmother but the poorhouse as a present refuge; and to the one death,
that ends all, and to the other a life of rough and unremitting work to
look to for by and by.
When Glory came into this world where wants begin with the first breath,
and go on thickening around us, and pressing upon us until the last one
is supplied to us--a grave--she wanted, first of all, a name.
"Sure what'll I call the baby?" said the proud young mother to the
ladies from the white corner house, where she had served four faithful
years of her maidenhood, and who came down at once with comforts and
congratulations. "They've sint for the praist, an' I've niver bethought
of a name. I made so certain 'twould be a boy!"
"What a funny bit of a thing it is!" cried the younger of the two
visitors, turning back the bedclothes a little from the tiny, red,
puckered face, with short, sandy-colored hair standing up about the
temples like a fuzz ball.
"I'd call her Glory. There's a halo round her head like the saints in
the pictures."
"Sure, that's jist like yersilf, Miss Mattie!" exclaimed Rosa, with a
faint, merry little laugh. "An' quare enough, I knew a lady once't of
the very name, in the ould country. Miss Gloriana O'Dowd she was; an'
the beauty o' County Kerry. My Lady Kinawley, she came to be. 'Deed, but
I'd like to do it, for the ould times, an' for you thinkin' of it! I'll
ask Peter, anyhow!"
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.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account