Zona Gale

“ An' then when everything was ready—Calliope's dress done an' layin' on their best-room bed, the minister stayin' home from conference to perform the ceremony, even the white cake made—off goes Calvert Oldmoton with Martha Boughton—a little high-fly that had just moved to town. A new girl can marry anything she wants in Friendship, if she does it quick. ”

“ An' Mis' Oldmoxon seemed real willin' she should have him. So when Calliope come home from the funeral—she rode alone with the little boy for mourners—she just went to work an' lived for that child.
"‘"In the wilderness the cedar," Delia,' she says to me. 'More than one of 'em. I've had 'em right along: my music scholars an' my dressmakin' customers an' all. An', Delia,' she says to me sort o' shy, 'ain't you noticed,' she says, 'how many neighbors we've had move in an' out that's had children? So many o' the little things right around us! ”

“ I like to think about him. An' I know when he says that, Calliope just put her arm around him. an' her head down, an' set sort o' rockin' back an' forth. An' she says:
"'Oh, but I think it begins when we don't know.'
"After a while she took him back to bed, little round face lookin' over her shoulder an' big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' little sort o' crooked frown, for all the world like the other Calvert Oldmoxon. Just as she come out an' set down again, we heard the click o' the gate acrost at the corner house where the New People lived, an' it was the New Husband got home. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”