The Indifference of JulietRichmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
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The Indifference of Juliet
Richmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
American fiction -- 19th century
"Everything I can think of, except start out myself. I am ready to do
that, if you think best."
"Not until I have gone over the neighbourhood myself. I don't believe he
is far away--I believe he is near. He may have heard every call you and
the children have made, and wouldn't answer. If by any chance his pride
has been a little hurt, he is very likely to do this sort of thing.
Wait--have you looked--I wonder if the children know----"
She was off without stopping to explain, through the garden and down the
old willow-bordered path by the brook. Anthony followed. "I've been down
here a dozen times," he called. "The brook is too shallow to hurt him, and
he's certainly not anywhere on it within a mile. The children have been
all over the ground."
But Juliet did not pause. She ran along the path for some distance, then
turned abruptly at a point where an abandoned lot filled with stumps
joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps,
Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his
wife's aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung
out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The
sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass
of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, lay fast asleep in his cunningly devised
retreat.
Without a word his father stood looking down at the boy's flushed cheeks.
Then he turned to Juliet, standing beside him, smiling through the tears
which had not come until the anxiety was past. His own eyes were wet.
"That was a bad scare," he said softly. "Thank God it's over."
Then he stooped and gently lifted the fire chief and carried him home
without waking him. Twenty children flocked joyfully from all about to
see, and hushed their shouts of congratulation at Juliet's smiling
warning.
Anthony went alone down the garden to the place where the hook-and-ladder
cart had stood. It was still there. He stood and looked at it, his eyes
very tender but his lips firm. "The little chap didn't give in," he said
to himself. "It's going to be hard to make him, but for the sake of the
Robeson will I think we'll have to take up the job where we left it. I'd
mightily like to flunk the whole business now, but I should be a pretty
weak sort of a beggar if I did."
When little Tony had wakened from his nap, and had been washed and brushed
and fed, and made fresh in a clean frock, his mother brought him to his
father.
"Is this Tony Robeson?" Anthony asked soberly. Tony considered for a
moment, then shook his head.
"I's ve fire chief," he said, with polite stubbornness.
"Have your men put away the hook-and-ladder cart?"
"No, favver."
"Are they going to do it?"
"I didn't tell vem to."
"Why not?"
"Didn't want to."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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