England -- Fiction; Husband and wife -- Fiction; Indiana -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Mate selection -- Fiction
She was lying on a nest of pillows, reading, surrounded by dormer
windows, in one of the upper rooms of the farm-house.
"Look at pa out there in the rain with his rubber coat and hat. He’s a
sight! Wonder if Glen will be over to-day."
"Appears to me, you’re always looking for Glen."
"There’s no one else to look for, here, is there?"
"Girls your age generally do attach themselves to the man who’s around."
"I’m no more attached to Glen than I ever was. Everybody likes him.
He’s a good fellow."
"That’s true. Do you think you’ll marry him?"
"What’s your opinion on that matter, Grandma Chazy?"
"I think you’d regret it all your life; he’s only a boy."
"Yes, but he’s a good fellow."
"You said that before."
Glen had kept away for a week or so after the moonlight circus party,
and in that time became morbid and melancholy. Indiana dominated him
completely. He racked his brain, hour after hour, trying to remember
the exact words in which she had uttered such and such a remark, with
her exact tone of voice and the exact expression of her eyes at the
time. Sometimes in his sleep he heard her calling "Glen dear! Glen
dear! Glen dear!" her childish name for him, in a helpless, frightened
voice. He would awaken with a terrible fear that she might be ill or in
trouble. Compared with this awful anxiety oppressing him in the night,
his past misery seemed nothing. He resolved that if Indiana only kept
well and happy he would ask nothing more of life. Again, he heard her
laughing in his dreams, mockingly, tantalizingly; laughing, laughing,
laughing, until his brain reeled, and he thought, "This is the laugh
that drives men mad." Then, when taking bicycle rides on the moonlight
nights of his week’s absence, her face seemed to flash upon him suddenly
in dark places, like that of a sweet ghost. Haunted like this, the idea
of seeing her in reality once more was like the conventional promise of
Heaven. He resolved to resume their old footing. "Indiana wishes it,
and anything is better than not to see her." He appeared again at the
model farm, humble and deferential to Indiana’s slightest wish, grateful
for her every look and word. With her tender heart and warm sympathies
she pitied him intensely. She tried to establish their old comradeship.
The loyal little soul hated to lose a friend.
Glen felt life was worth living once more. There is a magic flower,
tiny, and blue as the sky. This is the forget-me-not bloom of hope. It
sheds a sweet and subtle fragrance which enchants the soul, and charms
the eyes, so that they see a wonderful light on all things. But when
the flower perishes, there is an end to the spell. The glamour fades
before the eyes, the soul is seized with an aching grief. But the
witch-flower of hope will bloom again, if it is not plucked by the root.
"I’m getting a little bit tired of it myself, here," remarked Mrs.
Bunker. "Well, it’ll be time to pack up soon; I expect to enjoy myself
this summer."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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