Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
“There, there, dear. Try to rule thy spirit, Dorothy. Thee's too much
worked up about this. They are not worries to me. I am thankful we have
nothing to decide one way or the other, only to do our best with what is
given us. Thee's not thyself, dear. Go downstairs and fetch in the clothes,
and don't hurry; stay out till thee gets more composed.”
Dorothy did not succeed in bringing herself into unity with her father's
call, but she came to a fuller realization of his struggle. When he bade
them good-by his face showed what it had cost him; but Rachel was calm and
cheerful. The pain of parting is keenest to those who go, but it stays
longer with those that are left behind.
“Dorothy, take good care of thy mother!” Friend Barton said, taking his
daughter's face between his hands and gravely kissing her brow between the
low-parted ripples of her hair.
“Yes, father,” she said, looking into his eyes; “Thee knows I'm thy eldest
son.”
They watched the old chaise swing round the corner of the lane, then the
pollard willows shut it from sight.
“Come, mother,” said Dorothy, hurrying her in at the gate. “I'm going
to make a great pot of mush, and have it hot for supper, and fried for
breakfast, and warmed up with molasses for dinner, and there'll be some
cold with milk for supper, and we shan't have any cooking to do at all!”
They went around by the kitchen door. Rachel stopped in the woodshed, and
the tears rushed to her eyes.
“Dear father! How he has worked over that wood, early and late, to spare
us!”
We will not revive Dorothy's struggles with the farm-work, and with the
boys. They were an isolated family at the mill-house; their peculiar faith
isolated them still more, and they were twelve miles from meeting and the
settlement of Friends at Stony Valley. Dorothy's pride kept her silent
about her needs, lest they might bring reproach upon her father among the
neighbors, who would not be likely to feel the urgency of his spiritual
summons.
The summer heats came on apace and the nights grew shorter. It seemed
to Dorothy that she had hardly stretched out her tired young body and
forgotten her cares, in the low, attic bedroom, before the east was
streaked with light and the birds were singing in the apple-trees, whose
falling blossoms drifted in at the window.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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