Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
Sitting in her little bedroom now, off the parlor on the ground floor
in her home in Bethune Street, and looking out over the Kessels’ yard,
and beyond that--there being no fences in Bethune Street--over the
“yards” or lawns of the Pollards, Bakers, Cryders, and others, she
thought of how dull it must all have seemed to him, with his fine
imaginative mind and experiences, his love of change and gayety, his
atmosphere of something better than she had ever known. How little
she had been fitted, perhaps, by beauty or temperament to overcome
this--the something--dullness in her work or her home, which possibly
had driven him away. For, although many had admired her to date, and
she was young and pretty in her simple way and constantly receiving
suggestions that her beauty was disturbing to some, still, he had not
cared for her--he had gone.
And now, as she meditated, it seemed that this scene, and all that
it stood for--her parents, her work, her daily shuttling to and fro
between the drug company for which she worked and this street and
house--was typical of her life and what she was destined to endure
always. Some girls were so much more fortunate. They had fine clothes,
fine homes, a world of pleasure and opportunity in which to move. They
did not have to scrimp and save and work to pay their own way. And yet
she had always been compelled to do it, but had never complained until
now--or until he came, and after. Bethune Street, with its commonplace
front yards and houses nearly all alike, and this house, so like the
others, room for room and porch for porch, and her parents, too, really
like all the others, had seemed good enough, quite satisfactory,
indeed, until then. But now, now!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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