Laddie | Page 9

realized that this was
a soft voice singing, and I forgot everything else in a glow of delight.
The Princess was coming!
Never in all my life was I so surprised, and astonished, and bewildered.
She was even larger than our Sally; her dress was pale green, like I
thought a Fairy's should be; her eyes were deep and dark as Laddie had
said, her hair hung from a part in the middle of her forehead over her
shoulders, and if she had been in the sun, it would have gleamed like a
blackbird's wing. She was just as Laddie said she would be; she was so
much more beautiful than you would suppose any woman could be, I
stood there dumbly staring. I wouldn't have asked for any one more
perfectly beautiful or more like Laddie had said the Princess would be;
but she was no more the daughter of the Fairy Queen than I was. She
was not any more of a Princess. If father ever would tell all about the
little bauble he kept in the till of his big chest, maybe she was not as
near! She was no one on earth but one of those new English people
who had moved on the land that cornered with ours on the northwest.
She had ridden over the roads, and been at our meeting house. There
could be no mistake.
And neither father nor mother would want her on our place. They didn't
like her family at all. Mother called them the neighbourhood mystery,
and father spoke of them as the Infidels. They had dropped from
nowhere, mother said, bought that splendid big farm, moved on and
shut out every one. Before any one knew people were shut out, mother,
dressed in her finest, with Laddie driving, went in the carriage, all
shining, to make friends with them. This very girl opened the door and

said that her mother was "indisposed," and could not see callers.
"In-dis-posed!" That's a good word that fills your mouth, but our
mother didn't like having it used to her. She said the "saucy chit" was
insulting. Then the man came, and he said he was very sorry, but his
wife would see no one. He did invite mother in, but she wouldn't go.
She told us she could see past him into the house and there was such
finery as never in all her days had she laid eyes on. She said he was
mannerly as could be, but he had the coldest, severest face she ever
saw.
They had two men and a woman servant, and no one could coax a word
from them, about why those people acted as they did. They said 'orse,
and 'ouse, and Hengland. They talked so funny you couldn't have
understood them anyway. They never plowed or put in a crop. They
made everything into a meadow and had more horses, cattle, and sheep
than a county fair, and everything you ever knew with feathers, even
peacocks. We could hear them scream whenever it was going to rain.
Father said they sounded heathenish. I rather liked them. The man had
stacks of money or they couldn't have lived the way they did. He came
to our house twice on business: once to see about road laws, and again
about tax rates. Father was mightily pleased at first, because Mr. Pryor
seemed to have books, and to know everything, and father thought it
would be fine to be neighbours. But the minute Mr. Pryor finished
business he began to argue that every single thing father and mother
believed was wrong. He said right out in plain English that God was a
myth. Father told him pretty quickly that no man could say that in his
house; so he left suddenly and had not been back since, and father
didn't want him ever to come again.
Then their neighbours often saw the woman around the house and
garden. She looked and acted quite as well as any one, so probably she
was not half so sick as my mother, who had nursed three of us through
typhoid fever, and then had it herself when she was all tired out. She
wouldn't let a soul know she had a pain until she dropped over and
couldn't take another step, and father or Laddie carried her to bed. But
she went everywhere, saw all her friends, and did more good from her
bed than any other woman in our neighbourhood could on her feet. So

we thought mighty little of those Pryor people.
Every one said the girl was pretty. Then her clothes drove the other
women crazy. Some of our neighbourhood came from far down east,
like my mother. Our people back a little were from over the sea,