Over Paradise Ridge: A RomanceDaviess, Maria Thompson
General
Over Paradise Ridge: A Romance
Daviess, Maria Thompson
Harpeth Valley (Tenn.) -- Fiction; Love stories; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
As I went up the stairs to my room I met mother coming down to her
half-after-eight breakfast, and she was mildly surprised that I had not
come home at a proper time and gone to bed; but when she heard that I
had been with Sam's sick cows all night she was perfectly satisfied,
even pleased. Mother rarely remembers that I am a girl. She has thought
in masculine terms so long that it is impossible for her to get her mind
to bear directly on the small feminine proprieties.
"That's right, Betty, be a doer, no matter whom you do, even if it is
Sam's cow," said daddy, when I had finished my eulogy of Dr. Chubb and
beautiful old Mrs. Buttercup. Then he kissed mother and me and went on
down to his office, while she followed him to the gate, crocheting and
quite forgetting me.
Completely exhausted, but feeling really more effective in life than I
ever had before, even at the Astor tea-table (because Peter had been
perfectly well and Sam's cows hadn't), I took a magazine with an
entrancing portrayal of a Belgian soldier apparently eleven feet tall on
the cover and went out on the side porch to sit in the cool spring
sunshine and pick up the pieces of myself. When I put myself together
again I found that I made something that looked like an illustration to
a farm article rather than the frontispiece to an American epic. Still,
if for a friend I could grasp a farm problem with that executive
enthusiasm, had I any reason to doubt that I would have any trouble in
helping along an epic of American life? I decided that I would not, and
settled down to find out about the eleven-foot Belgian before I crept
off for a nap, when an interruption came and I had to prop my eyes open.
It was Eph with a letter and the information that Redwheels had shed a
bolt in its flight last night. I settled the bolt question with a
quarter and turned to the letter. It was from Peter, and I knew by the
amount of ink splashed all over the envelope that it must contain a high
explosive splashed on the inside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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