Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

“ It was chilly and they liked the cheerful warmth of the Saturday fire that was baking the beans and steaming the brown bread.
Susan unrolled her patchwork and, giving a flip to the cat with her thimble finger, settled herself comfortably in the kitchen rocker.
The cat leaped down and stalked into the next room with an air of offended majesty, as much as to say: “Of all the manners I ever saw, that woman has the worst! She contrives to pass by three empty chairs and choose the one I chance to be occupying!” ”

“ I am mortified at my despicable weakness and I will overcome it by realizing how unworthy I am to bear Duke’s honorable, unstained name, even if it is Hogg. You might as well give up, mother! If the dearest, best, most delightful man in the world loves me, I shall marry him, name and all.”
“I do not regard it as settled,” replied Mrs. Valentine calmly. “The young man may not think you so desirable when he learns that my refusal to accept him as a son-in-law means that he must take you without any income. ”

“ Caleb Kimball, as seen on his doorstep from Amanda Dalton’s sink window, was but a speck, to be sure, but he was her nearest neighbor; if a person whose threshold you never cross, and who never crosses yours, can be called a neighbor. There were seldom or never meetings or greetings between the two, yet each unconsciously was very much alive to the existence of the other. In days or evenings of solitude one can make neighbors of very curious things. ”

“ Her gray straw hat had a becoming band of flat green leaves, and she had a tinge of color. (Nothing better for roses in the cheeks than hurrying to be ready for the right man.) Anyway, such beauty as Tommy had was always there, and when she came to the door she smote Appleton’s eyes as if she were “the first beam from the springing east.” ”

“ Never, save in Venice, have I seen such a gorgeous array of color in a landscape.
Five hours we had in St. Thomas while the Diana put off hundreds of barrels of cement; but what with the gayly painted 203 boats and their dark-skinned crews, the naked brown boys diving and swimming for pennies and dimes in the harbor, a walk to Bluebeard’s Tower and Blackbeard’s Castle, we were well amused. Particularly so was Dorothea, who disappeared from my side for a half-hour while I chatted with the captain, rejoining me in the tiny palm-bordered park near the landing. ”

“ If you have been there, you remember that if you turn to the right and go over the stone bridge that crosses the sleepy river, you are in the very heart of beauty. You pick your way daintily along the edge of the road, for it is carpeted so thickly with sea-pinks and yellow and crimson crow’s-foot that you scarcely know where to step. Sea-poppies there are, too, groves of them, growing in the sandy stretches that lie close to and border the wide, shingly beach. In summer the long, low, narrow stone bridge crosses no water, but just here is an acre or two of tall green rushes. ”

“ The very first one pleased his exacting taste, and he felt that the Bexley Sands Inn would be the very spot in which to write; comfortable within, a trifle too large, perhaps, and at week-ends too full of people, but clean, well-kept, and sunny.
It was a Friday evening, and the number of guests who arrived on the last train from Torquay was rather disturbing. The dining-room service was not interfered with, but Appleton made up his mind to smoke his pipe in his own sitting-room and go down to the lounge later to read the papers, when the crowd might have dispersed. ”

“ Not a cloud sullied the surface of that fair blue canopy on this day of the faithless Pitt’s wedding-journey. A sweet wind blew the 165 tail feathers of the golden cock on the squire’s barn till he stared the west directly in the eye. What a day to drive to Portland! She would have worn tan-colored low shoes and brown openwork stockings (what ugly feet Jennie Perkins had!) , a buff challie dress with little brown autumn leaves on it, a belt and sash of brown watered ribbon (Jennie had a waist like a flour-barrel!) ”

“ Valentine had been a canary, people would have forever been putting a towel over her cage to secure silence. She was always idle, save for a bewildering succession of reconstruction periods, apparently forestalling ruins that no one else could have prophesied. She dieted and reduced her hips; had violet rays applied to her scalp; had her wrinkles ironed out by some mysterious process. If you caught her before ten in the morning you would find her with crescent-shaped 191 bits of court-plaster beside her eyes, in front of her ears, and between her brows. ”

“ The world would be quite right. It is a splendid marriage for Charlotte Clifford, and Clive Winthrop could look higher. He is my superior and that is the reason I love him. That he loves me proves that there is something in me that will rise to his level. All the same, I wrote him when I came away that I could never cross the bridge between us (there is a bridge, although he does not see it) until I was no longer his secretary and until I was sure his sister would welcome me into the household that has been so harmonious and delightful to every human being that has ever crossed its threshold. ”

“ Now that that experience is over, with the many others, we are at sea and quiet again, with one tranquil day just like the other.
“What a honeymoon journey it would make, Charlotte!” said Dolly one moonlight evening on deck. “It is so difficult to grow in knowledge of people in New York or Washington. One doesn’t even know one’s self.” ”

“ Valentine. “You will go through the woods to find a crooked stick at last, Dorothea,” she would say. “You don’t know a desirable parti when you see one. You must have an extraordinary opinion of your own charms to think that you have only to pick and choose. Those charms will fade, rather prematurely, I fear, and when your looked-for ideal comes along it may be that he will not regard you as flawless.” ”

“ I asked, trying to keep the note of sarcasm out of my voice.
“Certainly not. I care nothing about anybody but Tom Beckett, but Laura says that such a marriage will simply mean a life of self-indulgent luxury, idleness, and pleasure. She says marriage is something loftier and nobler than pleasing one’s self; that it ought to mean growth and development both to the man and the woman. She says that I should have no influence on Tom, and that I need somebody strong and serious to steady me. She says Tom and I would only frisk through life and leave the world no better or wiser than we found it. ”

“ A million million reeds stirred by the breeze bend to and fro, making a faint silken sound like that of a summer wave lapping the shore, but far more ethereal.
Thomasina Tucker went down the road, laden with books, soon after breakfast Monday morning. Appleton waited until after the post came in, and having received much-desired letters and observed with joy the week-enders setting forth, hither and thither on their return journeys, followed what he supposed to be Miss Tucker’s route ”

“ At length, however, it burst upon Dolly, who went off into irrepressible gales of laughter.
“You have lived so continuously in a rarefied Winthrop atmosphere, Charlotte, that you haven’t any modern vocabulary. He is telling you the pet name of his car, to give you confidence. Nobody ever dies in a tin ‘Lizzie.’ Not only is the machine indestructible, but the people that ride in it. Isn’t the driver a witty, reckless darling?” ”

“ Amanda was a large-hearted woman. She would have shared her soda biscuit, her bean soup, her dandelion greens, her hogshead cheese, her boiled dinner, her custard pie, with any hungry mortal, but no one in Bonny Eagle needed bite nor sup. Therefore she feather-stitched her dish-towels, piled her kindling in a “wheel pattern” in the shed, named her hens and made friends of them, put fourteen tucks in her unbleached cotton petticoats, and fried a pancake every Saturday for her cat. ”

“ Can’t you each compromise a little so as to look better together?”
“So hard to compromise when each of us has one dress hanging on one nail; one neck and sleeves filled up for afternoons and ripped out for evenings!”
“I should get four simple dresses just alike,” said Miss Guggenheim, who had a dozen.
“What if they should hang in our closets unworn and unpaid for?” asked Jessie Macleod.
“We’re sure to get at least one engagement some time or other. Nothing ventured, nothing have. We ought to earn enough to pay for the dresses, if we do nothing more,”—and Tommy’s vote settled it. ”

“ I haven’t any deep roots in New York; it’s like the ocean, too big to love. I respect and admire the ocean, but I love a little river. You know the made-over aphorism: ‘The home is where the hat is’? For ‘hat’ read ‘trunk,’ and you have my case, precisely.”
“That’s because you are absurdly, riotously young! It won’t suit you forever.”
“Does anything suit one forever?” asked Tommy frivolously, not cynically, but making Appleton a trifle uncomfortable nevertheless. “Anything except singing, I mean? Perhaps you feel the same way about writing? ”

“ The Swiss head waiter, who was new to 82 Wells, was a man of waxed mustaches and sleepless ambitions. The other hotels had most of the tourists, but he intended to retrieve the fortunes of his employer, and bring prosperity back to the side streets. He adored his vocation, and would have shed his heart’s blood on the altar of any dining-room of which he had charge. ”

“ There was never such a summer of enchanting weather as that particular summer in Wells. The whole population of Somersetshire, save those who had crops requiring rain, were in a heaven of delight from morning till night. Miss Tommy Tucker was very busy with some girl pupils, and as accompanist for oratorio practice; but there were blissful hours when she “studied” the cathedral with Fergus Appleton, watching him sketch the stately Central Tower, or the Lady Chapel, or the Chain Gate. ”

“ Couldn’t you marry me to-morrow, Tommy?”
“Certainly not! At any rate—not in the morning!” said Tommy mischievously, withdrawing her hand and moving out of the danger zone. 91
“And you must remember that your talent is your own, to use as you like!” Appleton continued after a well-filled pause. “Your voice is a unique and precious gift. I’ll try not to be selfish with it, or jealous of it, though if it had half the effect on other men that it has upon me, the floor would be strewn with broken hearts every time you sing!”—and he hummed under his breath:
“Oh, you dear absurdity!” ”

“ Nature is sometimes a kindly mother; often she wears a tragic mask, and now and 231 then she indulges in melodrama; but I never conceived the possibility of her having a sense of humor until we witnessed her freakish mood in the Dominica garden. There were the usual varieties of magnificent palms and brilliant flowering shrubs; but the joy of joys was the Sausage-Tree, around which we walked in helpless mirth at the incredible veracity of the imitation. ”

“ Fergus Appleton did not make acquaintances easily; no man does who has had a lonely, neglected boyhood, his only companion a father who seldom remembered his existence, and, when he did, apparently regretted it. ”

“ How little they understand us women, after all—poor, blind, unsuspicious doctors! My heart-beats, my color, my temperature, my pulse, my blood pressure, even my tongue, all these have told no tales to the scientific eye, and as it was literally impossible for Dr. Stanwood to discern my malady, it was equally beyond him to suggest a remedy. As a matter of fact, all I need to make and keep me well is large and constant doses of Richard Morton, Esq., of Baltimore; but who would confess that to a doctor? ”

“ Pitt thought Portland preferable to Biddeford or Saco as a place to pass the brief honeymoon, if for no other reason than because the road thither lay past the Rumford house. But the Rumfords’ blinds were tightly closed on the eventful Saturday, and an unnecessarily large placard hung ostentatiously on the front gate, announcing to passers-by that the family had gone to Old Orchard Beach, and would be home at sundown. This was a bitter blow to the bridegroom, for he had put down the back of the buggy with the intention of kissing the bride within full view of the Rumford windows. ”

“ It was a joyous surprise, then, when an old gentleman in the company (who was seen to wipe tears away when the girls sang “Darby and Joan”) engaged them to sing at his golden wedding the next night. That was the beginning of a season of modest prosperity. Tommy’s baritone had married his new accompanist (he seemed determined to have a piano-playing wife) , and wishing to show Miss Tucker that his heart was not broken by her rejection, he gave a handsome party and engaged the quartette, paying for their services in real coin of the realm. ”

“ And how cheerful it makes life to have somebody from your own country taking an interest in you, and liking your singing, and hating those beastly pennies!” And Tommy, quickly merging artist in woman, slipped on a coatee of dull-green crêpe over her old black taffeta, and taking down her hat with the garland of mignonette from the shelf in her closet, tucked some of the green sprays in her belt, and went down to luncheon. ”

“ What an example we shall be for the heathen nations! You will be noble and give up Dick Morton; I shall 317 be noble and marry him; and be noble at the same time in giving up Tom; Tom will be noble in suffering me to marry anybody but himself; Dick will be noble in obliging my father and marrying me instead of you; Laura is always noble! We could use up a whole order of nobility among us! ”

“ I’ve been staying mostly with a Mrs. Beckett, an old friend of my mother’s. She is the dearest and loveliest woman in the world and I can’t bear to be away from her.” 304
“Why can’t she join forces with you if you are so alone in the world?”
“Because there’s a son.”
“Is he too young, or too old, to join forces?”
“No, he’s just right, and he’d be only too glad to join forces, or anything else that had me in it, but he mustn’t, and that’s the reason Laura made me come here!” And with this she punched the sofa-pillows rebelliously, looking more like an enraged Angora kitten than anything else. ”