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
"Exactly," replied Mr. Gartney. "But you mustn't scream if we thump
about a little, in the drifts up there. It's pretty rough, at the best
of times, and the snow will have filled in the narrow spaces between the
rocks and ridges, like a freshet. Shall you be afraid?"
"Afraid! Oh, no, indeed! It's glorious! I think I should like to go
everywhere!"
"There is a good deal of everywhere in every little distance," said Mr.
Gartney. "People get into cars, and go whizzing across whole States,
often, before they stop to enjoy thoroughly something that is very like
what they might have found within ten miles of home. For my part, I like
microscopic journeying."
"Leaving 'no stone unturned.' So do I," said Faith. "We don't half know
the journey between Kinnicutt and Sedgely yet, I think. And then, too,
they're multiplied, over and over, by all the different seasons, and by
different sorts of weather. Oh, we shan't use them up, in a long while!"
Saidie Gartney had not felt, perhaps, in all her European travel, the
sense of inexhaustible pleasure that Faith had when she said this.
Down under Grover's Peak, with the river on one side, and the
white-robed cedar thickets rising on the other--with the low afternoon
sun glinting across from the frosted roofs of the red mill buildings and
barns and farmhouses to the rocky slope of the Peak.
Then they came round and up again, over a southerly ridge, by beautiful
Garland Lane, that she knew only in its summer look, when the wild grape
festooned itself wantonly from branch to branch, and sometimes, even,
from side to side; and so gave the narrow forest road its name.
Quite into fairyland they had come now, in truth; as if, skirting the
dark peak that shut it off from ordinary espial, they had lighted on a
bypath that led them covertly in. Trailing and climbing vines wore their
draperies lightly; delicate shrubs bowed like veiled shapes in groups
around the bases of tall tree trunks, and slight-stemmed birches
quivered under their canopies of snow. Little birds hopped in and out
under the pure, still shelter, and left their tiny tracks, like magical
hieroglyphs, in the else untrodden paths.
"Lean this way, Faith, and keep steady!" cried Mr. Gartney, as the horse
plunged breast high into a drift, and the sleigh careened toward the
side Faith was on. It was a sharp strain, but they plowed their way
through, and came upon a level again. This by-street was literally
unbroken. No one had traversed it since the beginning of the storm. The
drifts had had it all their own way there, and it involved no little
adventurousness and risk, as Mr. Gartney began to see, to pioneer a
passage through. But the spirit of adventure was upon them both. On all,
I should say; for the strong horse plunged forward, from drift to drift,
as though he delighted in the encounter. Moreover, to turn was
impossible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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