Westerfelt

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Westerfelt

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Title: Westerfelt
Author: Will N. Harben

Release Date: November 28, 2005 [eBook #17178]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
WESTERFELT***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

WESTERFELT

A Novel
by
WILL N. HARBEN

New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers 1901 Copyright,
1901, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved.

TO
MY WIFE

Westerfelt
Chapter I
They had had a quilting at the house of the two sisters that day. Six or
seven women of the neighborhood, of middle age or older, had been in
to sew on the glaring, varicolored square. All day long they had thrust
their needles up and down and gossiped in their slow, insinuating way,
pausing only at noon to move their chairs to the dinner-table, where
they sat with the same set curves to their backs.
The sun had gone down behind the mountain and the workers had
departed, some traversing the fields and others disappearing by
invisible paths in the near-by wood. The two sisters had taken the
finished quilt from its wooden frame, and were carefully ironing out the
wrinkles preparatory to adding it to the useless stack of its kind in the
corner of the room.
"I believe, as I'm alive, that it's the purtiest one yet," remarked Mrs.
Slogan. "Leastwise, I hain't seed narry one to beat it. Folks talks
mightily about Mis' Lithicum's last one, but I never did have any use

fer yaller buff, spliced in with indigo an' deep red. I wisht they was
goin' to have the Fair this year; ef I didn't send this un I'm a liar."
Mrs. Slogan was a childless married woman of past sixty. Her sister,
Mrs. Dawson, had the softer face of the two, which, perhaps, was due
to her having suffered much and to the companionship of a daughter
whom she loved. She was shorter than her sister by several inches, and
had a small, wrinkled face, thin, gray hair, and a decided stoop. Some
people said she had acquired the stoop in bending so constantly over
her husband's bed during his last protracted illness. Others affirmed that
her sister was slowly nagging the life out of her, and simply because
she had been blessed with that which had been denied her--a daughter.
Be this as it may, everybody who knew Mrs. Slogan knew that she
never lost an opportunity to find fault with the girl, who was considered
quite pretty and had really a gentle, lovable disposition.
"Whar's Sally?" asked Mrs. Slogan, when she had laid the quilt away.
"I don't know whar she is," answered Mrs. Dawson. "I reckon she'll be
in directly."
"I'll be bound you don't know whar she is," retorted the other, with
asperity; "you never keep a eye on 'er. Ef you'd a-watched 'er better an'
kept 'er more at home thar never would 'a' been the talk that's now goin'
about an' makin' you an' her the laughin'-stock of the settlement. I told
you all along that John Westerfelt never had marryin' in the back o' his
head, an' only come to see her beca'se she was sech a fool about 'im."
"I seed 'er down the meadow branch just now," broke in her husband,
who sat smoking his clay pipe on the door-step. "She was hard at it,
pickin' flowers as usual. I swear I never seed the like. That gal certainly
takes the rag off'n the bush. I believe she'd let 'possum an' taters git cold
to pick a daisy. But what's the talk?" he ended, as he turned his head
and looked at his wife, who really was the source of all his information.
"Why," replied Mrs. Slogan, with undisguised satisfaction in her tone,
"Mis' Simpkins says Westerfelt is goin' with Ab Lithicum's daughter
Lizzie."

"Well," said Slogan, with a short, gurgling laugh, "what's wrong with
that? A feller as well fixed as Westerfelt is ort to be allowed to look
around a little, as folks say in town when they are a-tradin'. Lord,
sometimes I lie awake at night thinkin' what a good time I mought 'a'
had an' what I mought 'a' run across ef I hadn't been in sech a blamed
fool hurry! Lawsy me, I seed a deef an' dumb woman in town t'other
day, and, for a wonder, she wasn't married, nur never had been! I