The Abilene reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1883-1888, 1883-10-04
A PARKWAY MELODY.

The clothes-line was wound securely
around the trunks of four gnarled,
crooked old apple-trees which stood
promiscuously about the yard back of
the cottage. 1t was tree-blossoming
time, but these were too aged and sap
less to blossom freely, and there was
only white bough here and there shak-
ing itself triumphantly from amongst
the rest, which had only their new green
leaves. There was a branch occasion
ally which had not even these, but
pierced the tender green and the fiossy
white in hard gray nakedness. All over
the yard the grass was young and green
and short, and had not yet gotten any
feathery heads. Once in while there
was a dandelion set closely down
amongst it.
The cottage was low, of dark red
color, with white facings around the
windows, which had no blinds, only
green paper curtains.
The back door was in the center of
the house, and opened directly into the
green yard, with hardly pretense of a
step, only fiat oval stone before it.
Through this door, stepping cautious
ly on the stone, came presently two tall
lank women in chOcOlate-colored calico
gowns, with basket of clothes be-
tween them. They set the basket I'M
derneath the line on the grass, with a
little clothes-pin bag beside it, and then
proceeded methodically to hang out the
clothes. Everything of kind went to-
gether, and the best things on the out
side line, which could be seen from the
street in front of the cottage.
The two women were curiously alike.
They were about the same height, and
moved in the same way. Even their
faces were so similar in feature and ex-
preston that it might have been a diff
ficult matter to distinguish between
them. All the difference, and that
would have been scarcely apparent to
an ordinary observer, was a difference
of degree, if it might be so expressed.
In one face the features were both bold
or and sharper in outline, the eyes were
trife larger and brighter, and the
whole expression more animated and
decided than in the other.
One woman's scanty drab hair was q
shade darker than the others, and the
negative fairness of complexion, which
generally accompanies drab hair, was
in one relieved by slight tinge of warm
red on the cheeks.
This slightly intensified woman had
been commonly considered the more at
tractive of the two, although in reality
there was very little to choose between
the personal appearance of these twin
sisters, Priscilla and Mary Brown. They
moved about the clothes-line, pinning
the sweet white linen on securely, their
thick white-stockinged ankles showing
beneath their limp calicoeS as they
stepped, and their large feet in cloth
slippers fiattening down the short green
grass. Their sleeves were rolled up,
displaying their long, thin, muscular
arms, which were sharply pointed at
the elbows.
They were homely women; they were
fifty and over now, but they never could
have been pretty in their teens, their
features were too irredeemably irregu-
lar for that. No youthful freshness of
complexion or expression could ever
have possibly done away with the i'm
preston that they gave. Their plain
ness had probably only been enhanced
by the contrast, and these women to
people generally seemed better looking
than when they were young. There
was an honesty and patience in both
faces that showed all the palmer for
their homeliness.
One, the sister with the darker hair,
moved little quicker than the other,
and lifted the wet clothes from the
basket to the line more frequently. She
was the first to speak, too, after they
had been hanging out the clothes for
some little time in silence. She stopped
as she did SO, with a wet pillow-case in
her hand, and looked up refectively at
the Towering apple boughs overhead,
and the blue sky showing between,
while the sweet spring wind ruffied her
scanty hair little.
q wonder, Mary" said she, eff
it would seem so very queer to die a
mornin' like this, say. Don't you be-
lieve there's apple branches a-hangin'
over them walls made out of precious
stones, like these, only there amt any
dead limbs among 'em, an they're all
covered thick with flowers? An 1
wonder if it would seem such an awful
change to 60 from this air into the air
os the New Jerusalem" Just then a
robin hidden somewhere in the trees
began to sing. ''I s'pose," she went
"a "that there's angels instead of