United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Villages -- Fiction
"Oh, that?--that's Cal Blake's--Major Blake's, you know. He married a
girl that come in here from the South with her mother. I guess that was
after you got out of here. They tore down the two houses and built that
big one. They say it's like them Southern houses, but I don't know. It
seems awful plain up the front of it. Cal's all right, though. I guess
mebbe he built the house kind of bare that way to please his wife and
his mother-in-law. I'll bet if he'd had his own way, there'd be some
brackets and fret work on the front to liven it up some. But I'd a done
just like him in his place, I would, by Gee! So would you if you seen
his wife. _Say!_ but never mind; you wait right here. She'll drive up to
git Cal from his office at four-thirty--it's right across there over the
bank where that young fellow is settin' in the window--that's young Cal
Denney, studyin' law with Blake. You just wait and see--she'll drive up
in about six minutes."
The wanderer waited, out of pure cordiality to Mr. Keyts. The prospect
was not exciting, but the simple faith of the villagers that outsiders
must share their interest in local concerns has always seemed too
touching a thing to wreck.
Within the six minutes mentioned by Mr. Keyts the diurnal happening to
which he attached such importance was observed. A woman (the younger of
the two seen in the phaeton) drove up for Major Calvin Blake; a youngish
rather than a young woman, slight, with an effect of stateliness, and
not unattractive. Her husband, a tall and pleasant enough looking man,
came down the stairs, and when he saw the woman his face lighted
swiftly--and rather wonderfully, when one considers that she was not
unexpected. They drove away.
The wanderer was not disposed to minimize the incident, however far he
might fall short of Westley Keyts's appreciation. But he had been long
absent from the Little Country, and the people of to-day were strange
and unimportant. He preferred to revive, as best he might, the days of
his own simple faith in the town's sufficiency; days when the world
beyond the Little Country was but a place from which to order
merchandise, or into which, at the most, adventurous Arcadians dared
brief journeys for profit or a doubtful pleasure; the days of a boy's
Little Arcady, that existed no more save as a wraith in remembering
minds.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Boss of Little Arcady, by Harry Leon Wilson
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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