News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-08-10
MISS LETTY'S ROMANCE.


From behind her small window, tn
blinds of which were partly closed
little Miss Lefty Smith was peerins
with almost breathless interest at th,
strangers, a man and child, who wer,
passing the diminutive plot of grount
she called her front yard.
1t was no wonder that she had paused
a moment, with her needle suspended
In mid-air, its half drawn thread hang
ing loosely in the seam behind it; fol
she pursued the weary round of dress
maker, tailoress, seamstress, and what
not, to the people of the village; an6
her back often ached over her fingers
and her fingers often ached over hel
work, as she put in the endless stitches
that were so many way-marks in he,
long path of toll.
Who could blame her if her tired
hands had stopped thus to rest awhile,
on the edge of still more vigorous labor
which must Inevitably follow as the re.
| SOAb "a ElACh d StAEuSUll1
But it was not for this that she had
stopped working just where her eyes
had arrested her busy hands, as clock
might stop when it had suddenly run
down. No, it was because she was liter
ally for the moment by surprise, and
her mind was slowly cropping its way
down, down among memories long since
covered with the dust of time-to the
one romance of her life.
She, worn, faded, and sorely tried by
the stress of circumstances, losses and
poverty, though she had outlived it; but
here was face, form, that stirred
feelings within her which bewildered
her, and made her breath come and go
with sob almost.
''Jim Hedges, as I am alive ~ she
gasped at last, sinking back into her
chair and covering her face with her
apron to hide her sudden bushes even
from herself, if she could. "And to
think of it undoing ME this way
wonder If shall ever see him or speak
to him again ? Though don't be-
lieve l could speak to him, I should
choke, I think, if I tried -
After the sudden nervous tremor that
had overtaken her had somewhat sub
sided, she jumped hastily up, and throw
ing a shawl over her shoulders, ran up
the rickety stairs that led to the garret,
from the north window of which she
could better watch the reeeding form of
the man she had once loved.
"He's married, and that's his child, 1
suppose" she nodded, resignedly. Poor
thing All her lie she had been used
to resigning everything lovely and bright
to somebody else; to watching joys she
could not share, and to witnessing loves
and sympathies in which she had no
part.
So, even as her bounding heart claimed
this, her one and only love for itself, she
meekly gave him over to some other
more fortunate woman, and covered up
its throbbings with her old shawl, as if
they must somehow be sinful and need
ed to be stihed.
The two strangers, the tall man and
the laughing, bright-faced child, turned
in, as Miss Lefty thought they would,
at the gate of the old Hedges home
stead. 1t was vacant now, and had
been for many year. Jim had left it
when a mere lad and gone out to an
uncle in South America. Jim's sister
had married and removed to the far
West, and the old folks had died and
been gathered to their fathers.
After being let to one careless tenant
after another, it had run down, until,
hearing nothing from its owners, and
having no instructions to repair it, the
agent, whose business it was to rent it,
closed it and left it to loneliness and
creeping decay.
No one ever went there now but Miss
Lefty, who had occasionally crept
through the gaps in its hedges to gather
roses from its struggling bushes, or to
sit with her sewing long summer
afternoon under the shade of the vines
of the neglected back porch, reviving
memories of the old days when Lucy
Hedges had been her dearest girl friend,
and Jim her openly acknowledged boy
lover.
And now Jim's hand was on the gate,
and his child's step already upon the
porch His ready key soon turned the
latch, and they both stepped over the
long silent threshold and disappeared
from her sight.
Blue and shaking with cold and ex-
citement, Miss Lefty turned from the
little window and crept back to the
warmth and dumb comfort of her fire.
side.
"Oh, mercy me oh, mercy me oh,
mercy me I" was all she seemed able to
think or say for at least five minutes.
"To think that he has come back at
last, after all these years, to his old
home.
"I wonder If he remembers y
Then she began to remember, with q
distinctness that was vivid, short, sweet
interviews and sly, stolen kisses under
the moon or caught at between those
old foolish games that tine young folks
of her time used to play at their merry
meetings.
"I wonder-if-he remembers" she
murmured over and o yer again, as she
rocked steadily in an aimless, dreamy
maze, back and forth, back and forth,
before her little stove. Then it all came
back to her suddenly, that that was long
ago; that both were older now; that
everything, including themselves, had
changed with time, and that she was
wasting precious moments.
She caught up her work again with
energy, but found to her dismay that