The Yates Pride | Page 3

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This etext was created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska.

THE YATES PRIDE A ROMANCE
BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN


PART I
THE YATES PRIDE
Opposite Miss Eudora Yates's old colonial mansion was the perky
modern Queen Anne residence of Mrs. Joseph Glynn. Mrs. Glynn had a
daughter, Ethel, and an unmarried sister, Miss Julia Esterbrook. All
three were fond of talking, and had many callers who liked to hear the
feebly effervescent news of Wellwood. This afternoon three ladies
were there: Miss Abby Simson, Mrs. John Bates, and Mrs. Edward Lee.
They sat in the Glynn sitting-room, which shrilled with treble voices as

if a flock of sparrows had settled therein.
The Glynn sitting-room was charming, mainly because of the quantity
of flowering plants. Every window was filled with them, until the room
seemed like a conservatory. Ivy, too, climbed over the pictures, and the
mantel-shelf was a cascade of wandering Jew, growing in old china
vases.
"Your plants are really wonderful, Mrs. Glynn," said Mrs. Bates, "but I
don't see how you manage to get a glimpse of anything outside the
house, your windows are so full of them."
"Maybe she can see and not be seen," said Abby Simson, who had a
quick wit and a ready tongue.
Mrs. Joseph Glynn flushed a little. "I have not the slightest curiosity
about my neighbors," she said, "but it is impossible to live just across
the road from any house without knowing something of what is going
on, whether one looks or not," said she, with dignity.
"Ma and I never look out of the windows from curiosity," said Ethel
Glynn, with spirit. Ethel Glynn had a great deal of spirit, which was
evinced in her personal appearance as well as her tongue. She had an
eye to the fashions; her sleeves were never out of date, nor was the
arrangement of her hair.
"For instance," said Ethel, "we never look at the house opposite
because we are at all prying, but we do know that that old maid has
been doing a mighty queer thing lately."
"First thing you know you will be an old maid yourself, and then your
stones will break your own glass house," said Abby Simson.
"Oh, I don't care," retorted Ethel. "Nowadays an old maid isn't an old
maid except from choice, and everybody knows it. But it must have
been different in Miss Eudora's time. Why, she is older than you are,
Miss Abby."

"Just five years," replied Abby, unruffled, "and she had chances, and I
know it."
"Why didn't she take them, then?"
"Maybe," said Abby, "girls had choice then as much as now, but I
never could make out why she didn't marry Harry Lawton."
Ethel gave her head a toss. "Maybe," said she, "once in a while, even so
long ago, a girl wasn't so crazy to get married as folks thought. Maybe
she didn't want him."
"She did want him," said Abby. "A girl doesn't get so pale and
peaked-looking for nothing as Eudora Yates did, after she had
dismissed Harry Lawton and he had gone away, nor haunt the
post-office as she used to, and, when she didn't get a letter, go away
looking as if she would die."
"Maybe," said Ethel, "her folks were opposed."
"Nobody ever opposed Eudora Yates except her own self," replied
Abby. "Her father was dead, and Eudora's ma thought the sun rose and
set in her. She would never have opposed her if she had wanted to
marry a foreign duke or the old Harry himself."
"I remember it perfectly," said Mrs. Joseph Glynn.
"So do I," said Julia Esterbrook.
"Don't see why you shouldn't. You were plenty old enough to have
your memory in good working order if it was ever going to be," said
Abby Simson.
"Well," said Ethel, "it is the funniest thing I ever heard of. If a girl
wanted a man enough to go all to pieces over him, and he wanted her,
why on earth didn't she take him?"
"Maybe they quarreled," ventured Mrs. Edward Lee, who was a mild,
sickly-looking woman