The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on FootDay, Holman
General
The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
Day, Holman
Political corruption -- Fiction; Water-supply -- Fiction
“I have been watching you,” the superintendent told him. “You're built
to boss men. What kind of a bump was it that ever slammed you down like
this?”
The answer the superintendent got was a smile which put further
questions out of his mind.
“No, her cheeks are not so hot,” affirmed Farr when he laid her in her
bed that night. “She will come along all right.”
But at the end of a week languor still weighed on the child. There were
circles under her eyes and her cheeks were wan, and she did not clap
her hands with the old-time glee when he brought her new toys; the
playthings lay beside her on the bed and invited her touch--staring eyes
of dolls, beady eyes of toy dogs--without avail.
“It is the queer way of being sick,” lamented the old man. “The doctor
mebbe not know, because he very gruff and do not say. I think I know
what may cure her--it has been done many time.
“Away up in the Canada country there is the shrine of the good Sainte
Anne de Beaupre. There she stand in the middle of the big church and she
hold her little grandson in her arm--the little boy Jesus. So she feel
very tender toward poor, sick childs. Ah, I have seen her many time--I
have seen childs healed there and made so very smart--all cure. She
loves little childs. _Oui_. All about her feet are short, small crutch
where she has cure childs. The piece of her wrist-bone is there in the
sacristy--it look like a wee scrap of some gray moss under the glass.
And it cure when the good priest say the word for her. I know the way to
the shrine of La Bonne Sainte Anne--I will go with the little Rosemarie
and she shall sing and dance after that.”
For a moment the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the
corners of Farr's mouth--the flash of the nature the young man had
hidden during recent weeks.
He turned to Zelie Dionne and found her regarding him with grave eyes.
“It is as M'sieu' Etienne says,” she assured the young man. “La Bonne
Sainte listens very tenderly when the children come to her. She is good
to all, but her spirit leans over the poor little children and comforts
them.”
“You have been there?”
“Many times, sir. It is not only the sick body that the good Sainte Anne
heals--she comforts anybody who is in much sorrow--she tells the right
way to go. There are many roads to take in this life--and if any one
goes to her with prayer and humble soul she will guide. Ah, it is true,
sir.”
There was earnestness in her features and conviction in her tones and it
was plain that Zelie Dionne was speaking out of the depths of her heart,
and Farr remembered what old Etienne had said about the son of Farmer
Leroux.
“Yes, she will lead to the right way and make all well in the end,”
asserted the girl. “And, most of all, she is kind and gentle to the
little children.”
Between her and the wistful old man Farr divided tolerant and kindly
gaze.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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