The Lucky Piece: A Tale of the North WoodsPaine, Albert Bigelow
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The Lucky Piece: A Tale of the North Woods
Paine, Albert Bigelow
Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Love stories
"But for the little girl there came a fortune not unlike her dreams.
That year a rich man and woman had built a camp in the hills. There was
no Lodge, then; everything was wild, and supplies hard to get. The
child's brother sold vegetables to the camp, sometimes letting his
little sister go with him. And because she was of the same age as a
little girl of the wealthy people, now and then they asked her to spend
the day, playing, and her brother used to come all the way for her again
at night. There was one spot on the hillside where they used to play--an
open, sunny place that they loved best of all--and this they named their
Garden of Delight; and it was truly that to the little girl of the hills
who had never had such companionship before.
"But then came a day when a black shadow lay on the Garden of Delight,
for the little city child suddenly fell ill and died. Oh, that was a
terrible time. Her mother nearly lost her mind, and was never quite the
same again. She would not confess that her child was dead, and she was
too ill to be taken home to the city, so a little grave was made on the
hillside where the children had played together, and by and by the
feeble woman crept there to sit in the sun, and had the other little
girl brought there to play, as if both were still living. It was just
then that the mother of Robin and his little sister died, and the city
woman, when she heard of it, said to the little girl: 'You have no
mother and I have no little girl. I will be your mother and you shall
be my little girl. You shall have all the dresses and toys; even the
name--I will give you that.' She would have helped the boy, too, but he
was independent, even then, and would accept nothing. Then she made them
both promise that neither would ever say to any one that the little girl
was not really hers, and she made the little girl promise that she would
not speak of it, even to her, for she wanted to make every one, even
herself, believe that the child was really hers. She thought in time it
might take the cloud from her mind, and I believe it did, but it was
years before she could even mention the little dead girl again. And the
boy and his sister kept their promise faithfully, though this was not
hard to do, for the rich parents took the little girl away. They sailed
across the ocean, just as she had expected to do some day, and she had
beautiful toys and dresses and books, just as had always happened in the
fairy tales.
"They did not come back from across the ocean. The child's foster father
had interests there and could remain abroad for most of the year, and
the mother cared nothing for America any more. So the little girl grew
up in another land, and did not see her brother again, and nobody knew
that she was not really the child of the rich people, or, if any did
know, they forgot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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