The Lamoille news. (Hyde Park, Vt.) 1877-1881, 1880-09-01
COMING BACK.

Up III u ClIJ SdIIGJ, O0 UOG June
LAY, weary woman leaned back in her
chair, and pressed her fingers against
the eyes that refused longer to see the
stitches 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! strawberries! 4!
Ripe, red strawberries
And, as if by magic, her thoughts
turning backward had carried her to
Depdene, the home of her youth, and to
d 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 perfuming 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 whatP For dream
of fame, which had left her toiling in
this hot garret, while in the black trunk
yonder the book which was 10 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
/ know that l 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 he1
worldly wealth was stored.
By the closest economy, she had
managed to lay aside few dollars, fol
the gloomy purpose of paying the ex'
penses of her own sickness and death
when the time should come for her tc
die among strangers.
From this sacred hoard she counted
out sufficient sum to take her to Deep
dene.
81 will stay only one day." sh,
thought. "And / will work all tn
harder after return to make up thi
sum again. But see Deepdene, now tina
it is fairly in my mind, l must! Ant
1 will take one more look atthe dear oil,
farm before it is in the hands of stran
gers, and so altered that l shall no
know it,"
The next day saw her on her way.
The five years of her absence had bee
years of change to the little country vi
lage.
A railway whisked her across the hill
road from Torrington. Once she woul
have made the journey in a yello'
stage, drawn by four horses, wit
John Colney, crossest and most di
agreeable of earthly stage-drivers, @
the box.
The village, too, was smartened an
freshened up-new houses, new faces,
new iron fence around the small ov
,ark that graced the center of the tow
new names above the gilded fronts
the shops; new set of giggling misse
on their way to the new brown-stt
academy, which stood where she Ii,
once thought it an honor to attend Il
district school, in plain, one-sto
structure of faded brick.
No doubt all these alterations were
the better; but they made her heart ac
with sense of loss unspeakable.
And she turned into the shaded 10
Il