New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Kedzie slept on and on, till at length the section of Crotona Park
immediately beneath her refused to adapt itself longer to her squirming
search for soft spots. She sat up in startled confusion at the
unfamiliar ceiling. The wall-paper was not at all what she always woke
to. At first she guessed that she must have fallen out of bed with a
vengeance. Then she decided she had fallen out of doors and windows as
well, and into the front yard.
No, these bushes were not those bushes. That beech almost overhead, seen
from below by sleep-thick eyes, was an amazing thing.
She had drowsy childhood memories of being carried up-stairs by her
father and put to bed by her mother. Once or twice she had wakened with
her head to the footboard and endured agonies of confusion before she
got the universe turned round right. But how had she got outdoors?
Her father had never carried her down-stairs and left her in the yard
before.
At last she saw that she had fallen not merely out of bed and out of
doors, but out of town. She remembered her wanderings and her lying down
to sleep. She wondered who had taken her hat off for her.
She looked about for somebody to ask questions of. There was nobody to
be seen. There were a few housetops peering over the horizon at her.
English sparrows were jumping here and there, engaged in their
everlasting spats, but she could not ask them.
Kedzie sat up straight, her arms back of her, her feet erect on their
heels at a distance, like suspicious squirrels. She yawned against the
back of her wrist and began to remember her escapade. She gurgled with
laughter, but she felt rumpled and lame, and not in the least like Miss
Anita Adair. She almost wished she were at home, gazing from her bed
to the washstand and hearing her mother puttering about in the kitchen
making breakfast; to Kedzie's young heart it was the superlative human
luxury to know you ought to get up and not get up.
She clambered to her feet and made what toilet she could while her
seclusion lasted. She shook out her skirts like feathers, and shoved her
disheveled hair up under her hat as she had always swept the dust under
the rug.
She was overjoyed to find that her hand-bag had not been stolen. The
powder-puff would serve temporarily for a wash-basin. The small change
in her purse would postpone starvation or surrender for a while.
She walked out of her sleeping-porch to the path. A few people were
visible now--workmen and workwomen taking a short-cut, and leisurely
gentlemen out of a job already beginning their day's work of holding
down benches. No one asked any questions or showed any interest in
Kedzie.
She found a street-car line, made sure that the car she took was bound
down-town, and resumed her effort to recapture New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account