Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
American literature
And there she was, surely enough, and they had a full view of her,
geranium-colored bows and all. She seemed to be a trifle partial
to the geranium-colored bows. Not too partial, however, for they
were very nicely put on. Here and there, down the front of her white
morning dress, one prettily adjusted on the side of her hair, one
on each trim, slim, black kid slipper. If they were a weakness of
hers, they were by no means an inartistic one. And as she came down
the garden-walk, with a little flower-pot in her hands――a little
earthen-pot, with some fresh gloss-leaved little plant in it――she
was pleasant to look at, pretty Polly P.――very pleasant; and Gaston
Framleigh was conscious of the fact.
It was only a small place, the house opposite and the garden was
the tiniest of gardens, being only a few yards of ground, surrounded
by iron railings. Indeed, it might have presented anything but an
attractive appearance, had pretty Polly P. not so crowded it with
bright blooms. Its miniature-beds were full of brilliantly-colored
flowers, blue-eyed lobelia, mignonette, scarlet geraniums, a thrifty
rose or so, and numerous nasturtiums, with ferns, and much pleasant,
humble greenery. There were narrow boxes of flowers upon every
window-ledge, a woodbine climbed round the door, and, altogether,
it was a very different place from what it might have been, under
different circumstances.
And down the graveled path, in the midst of all this flowery
brightness, came Polly with her plant to set out, looking not unlike a
flower herself. She was very busy in a few minutes, and she went about
her work almost like an artist, flourishing her little trowel, digging
a nest for her plant, and touching it, when she transplanted it, as
tenderly as if it had been a day-old baby. She was so earnest about it,
that, before very long, Framleigh was rather startled by hearing her
begin to whistle, softly to herself, and, seeing that the sound had
grated upon him, Popham colored and ♦laughed half-apologetically.
♦ ‘langhed’ replaced with ‘laughed’
“It is a habit of hers,” he said. “She hardly knows when she does it.
She often does things other girls would think strange. But she is not
like other girls.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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