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
Glory got hold of some old theology, too, that she could but
fragmentarily understand but that mingled itself--as all we gather does
mingle, not uselessly--with her growth. She found old books among Miss
Henderson's stores, that she read and mused on. She trembled at the
warnings, and reposed in the holy comforts of Doddridge's "Rise and
Progress," and Baxter's "Saint's Rest." She traveled to the Holy City,
above all, with Bunyan's Pilgrim. And then, Sunday after Sunday, she
heard the simple Christian preaching of an old and simple Christian man.
Not terrible--but earnest; not mystical--but high; not lax--but liberal;
and this fused and tempered all.
So "things had happened" for Glory. So God had cared for this, His
child. So, according to His own Will--not any human plan or forcing--
she grew.
Aunt Faith washed up the breakfast cups, dusted and "set to rights" in
the rooms where, to the young Faith's eyes, there seemed such order
already as could not be righted, made up a nice little pudding for
dinner, and then, taking down her shawl and silk hood, and putting on
her overshoes, announced herself ready for Cross Corners.
"Though it's all cross corners to me, child, sure enough. I suppose it's
none of my business, but I can't think what you're up to."
"Not up to any great height, yet, auntie. But I'm growing," said Faith,
merrily, and with meaning somewhat beyond the letter.
They went out at the back door, which opened on a little footpath down
the sudden green slope behind, and stretched across the field,
diagonally, to a bar place and stile at the opposite corner. Here the
roads from five different directions met and crossed, which gave the
locality its name.
Opposite the stile at which they came out, across the shady lane that
wound down from the Old Road whereon Miss Henderson's mansion faced, a
gateway in a white paling that ran round and fenced in a grassy door
yard, overhung with pendent branches of elms and stouter canopy of
chestnuts, let them in upon the little "Cross Corners Farm."
"Oh, Aunt Faith! It's just as lovely as ever! I remember that path up
the hill, among the trees, so well! When I was a little bit of a girl,
and nurse and I came out to stay with you. I had my 'fairy house' there.
I'd like to go over this minute, only that we shan't have time. How
shall we get in? Where is the key?"
"It's in my pocket. But it mystifies me, what you want there."
"I want to look out of all the windows, auntie, to begin with."
Aunt Faith's mystification was not lessened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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