Husband and wife -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Mary Donahue, red haired, quick, a woman where Augusta was a child,
understood and glowed with sympathy. But she could not entirely
suppress the little smile of the professional at the ardent amateur.
Mentally she gave them about three days to stay out on the road.
But then Augusta talked to her. And Mary Donahue came and saw the
business-like way in which Augusta had dismantled the house. And she
saw Jimmie. And Augusta talked to her more.
The result was that Patrick Donahue sold Augusta a gypsy horse and a
gypsy wagon. And Mary Donahue drove the spectacle to Augusta's door one
morning early and announced that she herself would pilot the expedition
out of the perils of New York.
She drove the length of Broadway, until that thoroughfare became a
country road well beyond the sacred, constable haunted terraces of
Yonkers. All the while she discoursed valuable information and wise
counsel. Augusta listened greedily, cramming mental notes until her
head swam. Wardwell listened too, half asleep, lying most of the day in
a bunk that stretched along the side of the wagon, not really believing
that this thing was going on as it seemed to be, but not interested
enough, and really too sick, to bother about a protest.
Before sun-down Mary Donahue helped them with their first camping and
cooking. And Augusta, meekly submitting to the rulings of her mentor,
was filled with the secret inner triumph of the dreamer who sees his
dream come true under the last commonplace test of practicability. She
could do it! Her plan would work!
Wardwell, standing around, easing the soreness out of his joints, and
sniffing with water in his mouth at the cooking meat--. He had at this
time an almost animal craving for red meat, and Augusta's diet would
not allow it until night--Wardwell, too, knew with a sudden conviction
that Augusta's plan was going to work.
By the time the busy gypsy girl had shown how to stow the things away
for the night she had become so interested in the project that she
began to feel a certain responsibility for it.
"What would you do," she asked, eyeing Augusta speculatively as the
latter sat on a low stump with a red framing of low sumach bushes
hanging about her shoulders, "what could you do if you lost your money
on the road, or went broke, or--?"
"Oh, but," Augusta broke in quickly, "Jimmie's going to be all right in
no time. And he'll be writing lots and lots. And since it won't cost us
hardly anything to live, why we'll be getting rich--rich!"
She did not want the financial outcome of their venture discussed in
Jimmie's hearing. She herself had no more thought or fear of the future
than have the birds when they start to follow the spring into the
north. But she knew that Jimmie's mind was raw on just this, and she
wanted it plain that he was the man and the provider.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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