Love stories; Mate selection -- Fiction; Mills and mill-work -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
“All right, then, I’ll leave it to you, Luke!” He went away well
pleased with himself. It would be, no doubt, another case of poor
Minnie, but with Luke at the books they could afford a passenger.
He found, however, directly Glen Darrow was installed at the Altonia,
that it was not in the very least another case of poor Minnie. The
girl was as silent as young Manders, almost as efficient, and with
an equally hearty appetite for work. It worried the old gentleman a
little; here was a girl who was his daughter’s sort--hadn’t she gone to
Miss Josephine’s when they were little tads? Certainly she had! Well,
then!--turned out into the cold world to earn her bread and butter!
How’d he feel if it was his Nancy, eh? And a pretty piece, too, with
that blaze of red hair round her face and those eyes and that skin,
by gad! But when all was said and done, Glen Darrow seemed to be the
kind of girl who could look out for herself. Pleasant enough, or at
least civil enough, but--well, edgy. The doctor had been a crusty old
customer; girl was a chip of the old block.
It was a matter of satisfaction to Mr. ’Gene Carey that his kinswoman
had gone to live with her within the first year of her orphanhood; Ada
Tenafee, he felt as did his Cousin Amos, the head of the clan, was a
fine woman, a fine, high-spirited woman, all Tenafee, and a fatherless,
motherless girl could not be more wisely and genteelly guarded and
guided.
It was, indeed, a most excellent arrangement for the woman as well as
the girl: Miss Ada punctiliously paid her board, and--in the first week
of her occupancy--sent the yellow slattern Emma-_leen_ packing and
installed a decent black woman in her place. The hideous house became
clean and orderly again, meals were well cooked and served, and the
very presence of a Tenafee in a Darrow house had a soothing--almost
a sanctifying effect. Glen, feeling the pressure of her father’s
prejudice, had faithfully tried half a dozen boarders before she
asked Miss Ada to live with her--school-teachers, clerks in stores, a
librarian--but without satisfaction, and her conscience was clear. She
let herself enjoy the gentleness which the faded spinster brought with
her, and the increased serenity of daily living, but she held herself
sternly faithful to her father’s codes. The thing had seemed to arrange
itself; “Miz-_za_da” was to come to her; they were predestined to live
together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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