The Sentinel. [volume] (Trenton, N.J.) 1880-1882, 1880-09-11
COMING BACK.

W III q Oily SeLACu, vi u uOG q uut
day, weary woman leaned back in her
chair, and pressed her fingers against
the eyes that refused longer to see the
bitches in the shop-work over which
she had toiled from daybreak till now,
four o'clock in the afternoon.
From the street far below her, voice
had only that moment scared upward,
calling Strawberr- ees! strawberr- ees +!
Ripe, red strawberr-ees!"
And, as if by magic, her thoughts
turning backward had carried her to
Deepdene, the home of her youth and to
certain lovely June day in her six
teenth year, when she had stood in the
strawberry pasture on the Blessing
farm, with the red berries pertaining all
the air, and said the words which
severed her fate from that of Maurice
Blessing, and made her life what it was
on this day, almost hopeless, and a
ceaseless struggle for bread, won at the
needles point.
How it all rose up before her! The
green pasture sloping upward to the
darker green woods, whose tops seemed
to touch the deep blue sky, sloping
downward to the gray stone wall, with
the cold spring leaping out through a
wooden trough, among its lower stones.
And below the wall, ''the thirty-acre
moving" spread out like an immense
emerald velvet carpet, with the two
story cream-colored house lifting its
piazzaed front at the extreme end, just
where the shaded lane began, that led
from the Blessing farm out into the vii
lage road.
She, the poor orphan girl, had been
offered this comfortable home; and she
had refused it-for what? For a dream
of fame, which had left her toiling in
this hot garnet, while in the black trunk
yonder the book which was to have
made her fortune, refused by one pub
Usher after another, was lying, till she
could find courage to thrust it into the
fire.
Scarcely five years." she sighed,
rocking herself to and fro. And
Maurice has sold the old farm and gone
to Colorado; and l am here, lonely,
disappointed, old before my time. Oh,
if could only live that day over again,
and be as wise as / am now! For now
1 know that love him-now, when it
is forever Too late!"
Sickening, with sort of calenture
among those hot city streets, for one
glimpse of her early home, Hester May
rose and went to the desk where her
worldly wealth was stored.
By the closest economy, she had
managed to lay aside few dollars, for
the gloomy purpose of paying the ex-
penses of her own sickness and death,
when the time should come for her to
die among strangers.
From this sacred hoard she counted
out sufficient sum to take her to Deep.
dene.
q will stay only one day." she
thought. "And ] will work all the
harder after / return to make up this
sum again. But see Deepdene, now that
it is fairly in my mind, / must! And
will take one more look att re dear old
farm before it is in the hands OF stran-
gers, and so altered that l shall not
know it."
The next day saw her on her way.
The five years of her absence had been
years of change to the little country vii
| lage.
A railway whisked her across the hill.
road from Torrington. Once she would
have made the journey in yellow
stage, drawn by four horses. with
John Colney, crossest and most dis
agreeable of earthly stage-drivers, on
| the box.
The village, too, was smartened anc
freshened up-new houses, new faces, 8
| new iron fence around the small ova
park that graced the center Of the town