Cousins -- Fiction; Prince Edward Island -- Fiction; Storytellers -- Fiction
“Oh, I hadn’t a pair without holes in the legs,” answered Peter easily,
“because ma hadn’t time to darn them this week. So I put on two pairs.
The holes don’t come in the same places, and you’d never notice them
unless you looked right close.”
“Have you got a cent for collection?” demanded Felicity.
“I’ve got a Yankee cent. I s’pose it will do, won’t it?”
Felicity shook her head vehemently.
“Oh, no, no. It may be all right to pass a Yankee cent on a store keeper
or an egg peddler, but it would never do for church.”
“I’ll have to go without any, then,” said Peter. “I haven’t another
cent. I only get fifty cents a week and I give it all to ma last night.”
But Peter must have a cent. Felicity would have given him one
herself--and she was none too lavish of her coppers--rather than
have him go without one. Dan, however, lent him one, on the distinct
understanding that it was to be repaid the next week.
Uncle Roger wandered by at this moment and, beholding Peter, said,
“‘Is Saul also among the prophets?’ What can have induced you to turn
church-goer, Peter, when all Olivia’s gentle persuasions were of no
avail? The old, old argument I suppose--‘beauty draws us with a single
hair.’”
Uncle Roger looked quizzically at Felicity. We did not know what his
quotations meant, but we understood he thought Peter was going to church
because of Felicity. Felicity tossed her head.
“It isn’t my fault that he’s going to church,” she said snappishly.
“It’s the Story Girl’s doings.”
Uncle Roger sat down on the doorstep, and gave himself over to one
of the silent, inward paroxysms of laughter we all found so very
aggravating. He shook his big, blond head, shut his eyes, and murmured,
“Not her fault! Oh, Felicity, Felicity, you’ll be the death of your dear
Uncle yet if you don’t watch out.”
Felicity started off indignantly, and we followed, picking up Sara Ray
at the foot of the hill.
The Carlisle church was a very old-fashioned one, with a square,
ivy-hung tower. It was shaded by tall elms, and the graveyard surrounded
it completely, many of the graves being directly under its windows. We
always took the corner path through it, passing the King plot where our
kindred of four generations slept in a green solitude of wavering light
and shadow.
There was Great-grandfather King’s flat tombstone of rough Island
sandstone, so overgrown with ivy that we could hardly read its lengthy
inscription, recording his whole history in brief, and finishing with
eight lines of original verse composed by his widow. I do not think that
poetry was Great-grandmother King’s strong point. When Felix read it, on
our first Sunday in Carlisle, he remarked dubiously that it LOOKED like
poetry but didn’t SOUND like it.
There, too, slept the Emily whose faithful spirit was supposed to haunt
the orchard; but Edith who had kissed the poet lay not with her kindred.
She had died in a far, foreign land, and the murmur of an alien sea
sounded about her grave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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