The Copy-Cat, and Other StoriesFreeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins
General
The Copy-Cat, and Other Stories
Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins
New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
Stephen did not tell Christopher how Ellen and Myrtle were to work the
farm with his aid. The two women had bade him not. Christopher seemed to
have no care whatever about it. He was simply happy. When Stephen left,
he looked at him and said, with the smile of a child, “Do you think I am
crazy?”
“Crazy? No,” replied Stephen.
“Well, I ain't. I'm just getting fed. I was starving to death. Glad
you don't think I'm crazy, because I couldn't help matters by saying I
wasn't. Myrtle don't think I am, I know. As for Ellen, I haven't seen
her since she was a little girl. I don't believe she can be much like
Myrtle; but I guess if she is what she promised to turn out she wouldn't
think anybody ought to go just her way to have it the right way.”
“I rather think she is like that, although I saw her for the first time
this morning,” said Stephen.
“I begin to feel that I may not need to stay here much longer,”
Christopher called after him. “I begin to feel that I am getting what I
came for so fast that I can go back pretty soon.”
But it was the last day of July before he came. He chose the cool of
the evening after a burning day, and descended the mountain in the full
light of the moon. He had gone up the mountain like an old man; he came
down like a young one.
When he came at last in sight of his own home, he paused and stared.
Across the grass-land a heavily laden wagon was moving toward his barn.
Upon this wagon heaped with hay, full of silver lights from the moon,
sat a tall figure all in white, which seemed to shine above all things.
Christopher did not see the man on the other side of the wagon leading
the horses; he saw only this wonderful white figure. He hurried forward
and Myrtle came down the road to meet him. She had been watching for
him, as she had watched every night.
“Who is it on the load of hay?” asked Christopher.
“Ellen,” replied Myrtle.
“Oh!” said Christopher. “She looked like an angel of the Lord, come to
take up the burden I had dropped while I went to learn of Him.”
“Be you feeling pretty well, Christopher?” asked Myrtle. She thought
that what her husband had said was odd, but he looked well, and he might
have said it simply because he was a man.
Christopher put his arm around Myrtle. “I am better than I ever was in
my whole life, Myrtle, and I've got more courage to work now than I had
when I was young. I had to go away and get rested, but I've got rested
for all my life. We shall get along all right as long as we live.”
“Ellen and the minister are going to get married come Christmas,” said
Myrtle.
“She is lucky. He is a man that can see with the eyes of other people,”
said Christopher.
It was after the hay had been unloaded and Christopher had been shown
the garden full of lusty vegetables, and told of the great crop with no
drawback, that he and the minister had a few minutes alone together at
the gate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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