The best stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, Volume 1 (of 2)Jewett, Sarah Orne
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The best stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, Volume 1 (of 2)
Jewett, Sarah Orne
American fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, American
“No; all come in pretty light,” answered Mr. Tilley. “Addicks an’ Bowden
they done the best; Abel an’ me we had but a slim fare. We went out
’arly, but not so ’arly as sometimes; looked like a poor mornin’. I got
nine haddick, all small, and seven fish; the rest on ’em got more fish
than haddick. Well, I don’t expect they feel like bitin’ every day; we
l’arn to humor ’em a little, an’ let ’em have their way ’bout it. These
plaguey dog-fish kind of worry ’em.” Mr. Tilley pronounced the last
sentence with much sympathy, as if he looked upon himself as a true
friend of all the haddock and codfish that lived on the fishing grounds,
and so we parted.
Later in the afternoon I went along the beach again until I came to the
foot of Mr. Tilley’s land, and found his rough track across the
cobble-stones and rocks to the field edge, where there was a heavy piece
of old wreck timber, like a ship’s bone, full of treenails. From this a
little footpath, narrow with one man’s treading, led up across the small
green field that made Mr. Tilley’s whole estate, except a straggling
pasture that tilted on edge up the steep hillside beyond the house and
road. I could hear the tinkle-tankle of a cow-bell somewhere among the
spruces by which the pasture was being walked over and forested from
every side; it was likely to be called the wood lot before long, but the
field was unmolested. I could not see a bush or a brier anywhere within
its walls, and hardly a stray pebble showed itself. This was most
surprising in that country of firm ledges, and scattered stones which
all the walls that industry could devise had hardly begun to clear away
off the land. In the narrow field I noticed some stout stakes,
apparently planted at random in the grass and among the hills of
potatoes, but carefully painted yellow and white to match the house, a
neat sharpedged little dwelling, which looked strangely modern for its
owner. I should have much sooner believed that the smart young wholesale
egg merchant of the Landing was its occupant than Mr. Tilley, since a
man’s house is really but his larger body, and expresses in a way his
nature and character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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