City and town life -- Fiction; Short stories, American
We planned the whole thing out, sitting up there till plump six o'clock
when the whistle blew, and not a scratch of sweeping done in the chamber
yet. The ladies both flew for home then, and I went at the sweeping,
being I was too excited to eat anyway, and I planned like lightning the
whole time. And I made up my mind to arrange with Miss Mayhew that
night.
I'd had my supper and was rocking on the front porch when she came home.
The moon was shining up the street, and the maple leaves were all moving
pleasant, and their shadows were moving pleasant, too, as if they were
independent. Everybody's windows were open, and somewhere down the block
some young folks were singing an old-fashioned love-song--I saw Miss
Mayhew stand at the gate and listen after she had come inside. Then she
came up the walk slow.
"Good evening and glad you're back," said I. "_Ain't_ this a night?"
She stood on the bottom step, looking the moon in the face. The air was
sweet with my yellow roses--it was almost as if the moonlight and they
were the same color and both sweet-smelling. And her a picture in that
yellow frame.
"Oh, it is--it is," she says, and she sighs.
"This," I says, "isn't a night to sigh on."
"No," she says, "it isn't--is it? I won't do it again."
"Sit down," I says, "I want to ask you something."
So then I told her how her wardrobe door had happened to swing open, and
what we wanted to do.
"--we don't see any too many pretty things here in the village," I said,
"and I'd kind of like to do it, even if we didn't make a cent of money
out of it for the park."
She didn't say anything--she just sat with her head turned away from me,
looking down the street.
"--us ladies," I said, "we don't dress very much. We can't. We've all
had a hard time to get together just what we've had to have. But we all
like pretty things. I s'pose most all of us used to think we were going
to have them, and these things of yours kind of make me think of the way
I use' to think, when I was a girl, I'd have things some day. Of course
now I know it don't make a mite of difference whether anybody ever had
them or not--there's other things and more of them. But still, now and
then you kind of hanker. You kind of hanker," I told her.
Still she didn't say anything. I thought mebbe I'd offended her.
"We wouldn't touch them, you know," I said. "We'd only just come and
look. But if you'd mind it any--"
Then she looked up at me, and I saw that her eyes were brimming over
with tears.
"Mind!" she said. "Why, no--no! If you can really use those things of
mine. But they're not nice things, you know."
"Well," I says, "I dunno as us ladies would know that. But you do love
_light_ things when you've had to go around dressed dark, either 'count
of economy or 'count of being afraid of getting talked about. Or both."
She got up and leaned and kissed me, light. Wasn't that a funny thing to
do? But I loved her for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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