Love stories; Mate selection -- Fiction; Mills and mill-work -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
She went home with Glen that night, and halted in breathless and
worshipful admiration at the door of the ugly sitting room, her gaze
roaming impartially over the glistening golden oak and offensive
carpets but coming to rest on the small, patrician rug. “I know in time
hit’s jes’ pintly erbleeged to be a Wishin’ Cyarpet!” she murmured,
round-eyed. She dropped to her knees and crept close to it. “I wouldn’t
go fo’ to tech hit ... hit’s so sweet-pretty an’ hahn’-sum ... but I
kin _remember_ hit. An’ some day, when I git me somep’n moughty big’n
fine to wish fo’, why, yo’ll lemme come hyar an’ wish on hit, won’t
yo’, Glen, honey-heart?”
After she had pattered down the hill her friend stood still, looking
at the small section of beauty in her unbeautiful home. “I wish,” she
thought rebelliously, “that I could make the rest of the house match
it!” And then, quite suddenly and surprisingly, came the determination
to do it, and with it a thrill of eagerness and interest. She could not
buy more Persian rugs, of course, but she could cleanse her dwelling
of its most appalling ugliness, so that her one treasure would have at
least a less atrocious background.
Miss Ada Tenafee, eagerly consulted at the supper table, fell in
with the plan in the nicest possible spirit of enthusiasm. Miss Ada
had shrewdly conjectured that all was not moonlight and roses in
the love affair of her enemy and her beloved young protégée, and
rejoiced thereat, and she welcomed this fresh interest. Her own room
in the Darrow house had always been charming, for she had brought her
furniture with her, and she announced now that there were several
really good pieces which her own dear father had brought from his
ancestral home, stored in the attic at Cousin Amos’ mansion.
“But, Miss Ada!--That would be wonderful, but would you want to bring
them here?”
She insisted warmly that she would. (Anything which gave her a firmer
hold here, made the home more definitely hers.... Of course, when Glen
married the young savage and brought him here, the gentlewoman must go;
it would be an intolerable situation. But meanwhile, the deeper she
could drive her roots, the better. And she had been aware, lately, of a
growing hope.... He came less often and there was a restraint in Glen’s
manner when she spoke of him....)
“The _first_ thing,” Glen was glowing with her excited interest, “will
be to take all this awful wall paper off and put on something perfectly
plain.”
“Well, I’d have the perfectly plain in the parlor and dining room,”
Miss Ada offered, “but don’t you think you’d like some quaint little
flowered patterns in the bedrooms?”
“Of course! And rag rugs and patchwork-quilts, and rush-bottomed
chairs? I’ve noticed pictures in the back of magazines”--even the
hectic weekly was not above running opulent advertisements--“and I
read a home decoration article at the library one evening! And little
dotted-muslin curtains! I could make them myself!”
“And I could help you,” Miss Ada purred.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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