"Louisa--" No gap between subjects halted Katy's speech; she leaped it
with a bound. "Louisa is very dumb. Now I do not believe myself that a
person can learn everything. But you can train your mind so that you can
understand everything if it is explained to you. You must keep your mind
all the time busy and you must be very humble. Louisa said that poetry
was dumb. Louisa cannot even understand, 'Where, oh, where are the
visions of morning?' Louisa thinks everything must be real. I said to
her I would be ashamed to talk that way. The realer poetry is the harder
it is. But Louisa! Ach, my! Gran'mom! The teacher said Louisa should
write 'pendulum' in a sentence, and Louisa wrote 'Pendulum Franklin is
dead'!"
"Do you like poetry, Katy?" asked Grandmother Gaumer.
"Some," answered Katy. "It is not the fault of the poetry that I cannot
understand it all. I want to understand everything. I do not mean,
gran'mom, that you cannot be good unless you understand everything. But
there is more in this world than being good. Sarah Ann is good, but
Sarah Ann has a pretty slow time in this world."
"Sarah Ann does many kind things."
"But the squire and gran'pop do more because they are smarter," said
Katy triumphantly. "When the people want advice, do they go to Sarah
Ann? They come to the squire or to gran'pop!"
Grandmother Gaumer smiled. Sometimes Katy talked in borrowed phrase
about a "larger vision" or "preparation for a larger life."
"Millerstown!" said Katy with a long sigh and a shake of the head. "I
could not stay forever in Millerstown, gran'mom. Think of the Sunday
School picnics with the red mint candy on the cakes and how Susannah and
Sarah Knerr try to have the highest layer cakes, and each wants the
preacher to eat. Think of the Copenhagen, gran'mom, and the Bingo and
the Jumbo, gran'mom!" In derision Katy began to sing, "A certain
farmer."
Grandmother Gaumer leaned forward in her chair. A sense of uneasiness
overwhelmed her, though Katy had heard nothing. "Listen, Katy!"
There was nothing to be heard; Grandfather Gaumer had fallen; beside him
knelt his brother and the doctor; aghast Bevy flung her arms above her
head; all were as yet silent.
"It is nothing, gran'mom," said Katy. Katy began her chattering again;
she laughed now because Bevy had said that it brought bad luck to use
black pins on white material or to sew when the clock struck twelve.
Grandmother Gaumer went on with her stitching. A boy ran down the
street; the sound disturbed her.
"I will go and see," offered Katy, putting the scarlet ruffles off her
lap. She did not move as swiftly as she would have moved six months ago.
Then the sound of rapid steps would have drawn her promptly in their
wake. But the affairs of Millerstown had ceased to be of great
importance. She did not even hate Millerstown now. "I guess it is just a
boy running, gran'mom. I guess--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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