The Story of Waitstill BaxterWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
General
The Story of Waitstill Baxter
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; New England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction
Then in the pine woods there would be, she was sure, Star of Bethlehem,
Solomon's Seal, the white spray of groundnuts and bunchberries. Perhaps
they could make a bouquet and Patty would take it across the fields
to Mrs. Boynton's door. She need not go in, and thus they would not
be disobeying their father's command not to visit that “crazy Boynton
woman.”
Here Patty came in with a pan full of greens and the sisters sat down in
the sunny window to get them ready for the pot.
“I'm calmer,” the little rebel allowed. “That's generally the way it
turns out with me. I get into a rage, but I can generally sing it off!”
“You certainly must have got rid of a good deal of temper this morning,
by the way your voice sounded.”
“Nobody can hear us in this out-of-the-way place. It's easy enough to
see that the women weren't asked to say anything when the men settled
where the houses should be built! The men weren't content to stick them
on the top of a high hill, or half a mile from the stores, but put them
back to the main road, taking due care to cut the sink-window where
their wives couldn't see anything even when they were washing dishes.”
“I don't know that I ever thought about it in that way”; and Waitstill
looked out of the window in a brown study while her hands worked with
the dandelion greens. “I've noticed it, but I never supposed the men did
it intentionally.”
“No, you wouldn't,” said Patty with the pessimism of a woman of ninety,
as she stole an admiring glance at her sister. Patty's own face,
irregular, piquant, tantalizing, had its peculiar charm, and her
brilliant skin and hair so dazzled the masculine beholder that he took
note of no small defects; but Waitstill was beautiful; beautiful even
in her working dress of purple calico. Her single braid of hair, the
Foxwell hair, that in her was bronze and in Patty pale auburn, was wound
once around her fine head and made to stand a little as it went across
the front. It was a simple, easy, unconscious fashion of her own, quite
different from anything done by other women in her time and place, and
it just suited her dignity and serenity. It looked like a coronet, but
it was the way she carried her head that gave you the fancy, there was
such spirit and pride in the poise of it on the long graceful neck. Her
eyes were as clear as mountain pools shaded by rushes, and the strength
of the face was softened by the sweetness of the mouth.
Patty never let the conversation die out for many seconds at a time and
now she began again. “My sudden rages don't match my name very well,
but, of course, mother didn't know how I was going to turn out when she
called me Patience, for I was nothing but a squirming little bald, red
baby; but my name really is too ridiculous when you think about it.”
Waitstill laughed as she said: “It didn't take you long to change it!
Perhaps Patience was a hard word for a baby to say, but the moment you
could talk you said, 'Patty wants this' and 'Patty wants that.”'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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