Miss Gibbie Gault | Page 7

Yorkburg recovering from its shock, took up once more the placid
movement of its life.
Mary Cary opened her shutters and with hands on the window-sill
leaned out and took a deep breath, then she laughed and nodded her
head. "Good-morning sun," she said, "good-morning birds,
good-morning everything!" Her eyes swept the scene before her,
adsorbed greedily its every detail, then rested on the orchard to the
right.

"Oh, you beautiful apple blossoms! You beautiful, beautiful apple
blossoms!" She threw them a kiss. "And to think you are mine--mine!"
In her voice was a quivering little catch, and presently she dropped on
her knees by the open window and rested her arms on the sill. Again
her eyes swept sky and field, now glancing at the lawn of velvet green,
now at the upturned earth on the left, the or hard on the right, the thread
of water in the distance winding lazily in and out at the foot of low hills,
and now at the sun, well up from the soft dawning of another day, and
suddenly she stretched out her arms.
"God," she said, "God, I am so glad--so glad!"
For some minutes she knelt, her chin in the palms of her hands, her
gaze wandering down the road to the little town less than a mile away,
and presently she laughed again as if at some dear memory. It was so
good to be among the old loved things, the straggling streets and
shabby houses, the buttercups and dandelions, and the friends of other
days. It was good, and out loud she said again: "I am so glad."
"Your bath, mein Fraulein."
She got up; the soft gown falling from bare shoulders stirred in the light
breeze. She pulled the ribbons from the long braids of hair, and coiled
them round her head, but she did not leave the window.
"All right, I'll be there in a minute." Then: "Hedwig?"
"Yes, mein Fraulein."
"Do you think I could have the day to myself? I have something
important to do, and I can't do it if constantly interrupted. If any one
comes, could you keep me from knowing it?"
"I think so, mein Fraulein."
The shadow of a smile hovered a moment on Hedwig's lips. "Does that
mean all and everybody, or--"

"Everybody! Of course not Miss Gibbie, but everybody else. I shall not
be at home, you see. I will be down in the orchard, and if Miss Gibbie
comes bring her there, but never, never let any one else come there,
Hedwig."
"I understand, mein Fraulein."
The door was closed quietly, and the girl now standing in front of her
mirror looked into it first with unseeing eyes, then suddenly with
critical ones.
"You must look you best to-night, Mary Cary. You don't want to go to
that meeting. You don't like to do a lot of things you've got to do if
you're to be a brave lady, but Martha knows nothing is accomplished
by wanting only, and Martha is going to make you talk to those men
to-night." She leaned closer to the mirror. "I wonder how you happened
to have light eyes when you like dark ones so much better, and brown
hair when black is so much prettier? You should be thankful you don't
have to use curlers, and that you have plenty of color, but every now
and then I wish you were a raging beauty, so men would do what you
want."
Her brow ridged in fine upright folds as if thinking, then she turned,
nodding her head in decision. "I will ear that white embroidered mull
to-night. It is so soft and sweet and silly, and men like things like that."
Some hours later, household duties having been attended to, fresh
flowers cut and the stable visited, the little vine-draped shelter made of
saplings, stripped of branch but not of bark, and canvas-covered on the
top, was the point of destination; but first she stood on the front porch
and looked up and down the sandy road which could be well seen from
the hilltop. No sign of life upon it, she turned and went through the hall
to the back porch and down the steps to the orchard, in one hand
writing-materials, in the other pieces of stale bread for the birds; and as
she walked she hummed a gay little tune to whose rhythm she
unconsciously kept step.
Many of the trees were old and bent and twisted in fantastic shapes--

some were small and partly dead, but most were fit for some festival of
the gods; and as she went in and out among them, her feet making but
slight impression on the moist springy soil, grass-grown and sprinkled
with petals, pink and white, she stopped now and then