The circuit rider : $b A tale of the heroic ageEggleston, Edward
History
The circuit rider : $b A tale of the heroic age
Eggleston, Edward
Christian fiction; Circuit riders -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
But Patty? She did not hurry. She put everything away carefully.
She was rather slow about retiring. But when at last she went aloft
into her room in the old block-house part of the building, and shut
and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the high,
old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she looked at herself in the
little looking-glass and did not see there the face she had been able
to keep while the eyes of others were upon her. She saw weariness,
disappointment, and dejection. Her strong will held her up. She
undressed herself with habitual quietness. She even stopped to look
again in self-pity at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on
her night-cap. But when at last she had blown out the candle, and
carefully extinguished the wick, and had climbed into the great,
high, billowy feather-bed under the rafters, she buried her tired
head in the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once admitting to
herself what she was crying about.
And as the days wore on, and her father ceased to speak of Kike or
Morton, and she heard that they were out of the settlement, she found
in herself an ever-increasing desire to see Morton. The more she
tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied to herself the
existence of the feeling, the more intense did it become. Whenever
hunters passed the gate, going after or returning laden with game,
she stopped involuntarily to gaze at them. But she never failed, a
moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of countenance and
to rebuke herself for curiosity so idle. What were hunters to her?
But one evening the travelers whom she looked for went by. They were
worse for wear; their buckskin pantaloons were torn by briers; their
tread was heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty,
peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse, did not fail
to recognize old Blaze, burdened as he was with venison, bear-meat
and skins, nor to note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at
Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse of herself.
That look of Morton's sent a blush of pleasure over her face, which
she could not quite conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a
younger brother a minute later. But when she saw her father gallop
rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the young men, her sense of
pleasure changed quickly to foreboding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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