California -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American; Western stories
Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the
dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she
had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were
half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay
her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her
I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened
with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to
the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers
the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came
upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty
head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast
in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned
away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where
hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing
suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment,
thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the next instant
lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness
to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time
sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could
not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the
dress she was then wearing, before the mirror. And then suddenly she
became aware of a child's voice close beside her, and she stopped. And
then the child's voice repeated, “Is it Mamma?”
Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a
little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was
torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled
seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque
little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain
self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much
to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently
of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a
cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long
shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders
and swept the floor.
The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had
but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in
the doorway, again asked, “Is it Mamma?” she answered sharply, “No, it
isn't,” and turned a severe look upon the intruder.
The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance,
said in deliciously imperfect speech:
“Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?”
But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the
child's shoulders, and said angrily:
“How dared you take my things, you bad child?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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