The Democrat. (Scotland Neck, Halifax Co., N.C.) 1884-1896, 1890-03-13
A STORY.
HOW BESSIE BRAVFD THE
BLIZZARD.
New York Ledger.)
THE bra;est are the tenderest.
The loving are the daring'"
BIT KATE ID. CLEART.

uIcdi IL dil IOUhS
And indeed the view seen from
the window Of the big. white, West
ern farm house was anything but
cheerful. Bare, brown, treeless
prairie all around a sullen, wintry
sky overhead and not a living crea-
ture in sight except a distant speck
Of scarlet down 10 tie " draw
Baby Willie at play.
IDdoors it was pleasant enough.
Bessie was a bri-k and tidy little
housckeeper. When. Immediately
after dinner, her father had brought
| round the team, and be and her
mother had driven off to town to do
their regular weekly shopping, or
trading" as they called it, Bessie
had hustled about at a wonderful
rate. She had washed the dishes,
and put them in shining row on
the yellow pine dresser; she had
polished tue stove, and brought IN
water she had swept the room, and
Strengthened the rocker cushions :;
she had set "sponge" for the bread
that was TO te worked at night, and
baked early in the morning she had
shaken the gay strip of rag carpet,
and busted the clock>sheif, and
ranged the chairs by the wall with
mathem atical precision. Then she
had washed her face and hands in
the bright tin pan kept for that pur-
pose GA a backless chair near the
door, and brushed and braided her
soft, brown hair. She took off her
apron of blue-cheCked gingham put
Oh one Of snowy nsinsook, hung q
clean roller towel on the rack, and
put a kettle Of water Oh the fire.
Then she had taken up her one dear
story book and sat down to read.
1t was a tremendously attractive
hook to the girl who had been
brought up in the tameness and
mOnotony Of prairie life; 1t was all
about great, good and brave women;
about FIOrence Nightingale, and
Joan of Arc, and Grace Darling, and
Liza Lewis, and her0ines of every
time and place. A beautiful book
But Bessie laid 1t down with the con-
sciousness that she had been intrud~
ing, that the company in the bril-
lance of whose deeis she had been
hasking was altooetber too lofty
and magnanimOus for her.
SO she went over to the window
and leaned her head against the pane,
and thought how hard it was to be q
heroine in Nebraska. There was no
war here, 40 plague, not even any
Indians now. And nothing ever
happened.
And bordering over this had
caused her to give long sigh, and
voice her discomfort oyer the dreari~
ness Of all crettion,
1t was no wonder her life was a
wee hit lonely. The nearest neigh
bors lived a mile away. Willie was
too young to be company for her.
What dId he care about her vague,
delightful dreans-asout her hero
ines? And her parents had decided
she was not strong enough to 20 to
school that winter. Indeed, were
sue permitted to do so the girl would
find it recreation; merely that,
For she knew quite as much as her
rather inefficient young teacher could
attempt to teach her.
SIZE was q slender, delicately
formed girl Of sixteen. Her hair, Of
crispy sickness, was parted over
her forehead in old,fashioned style.
Her eyhs-largc, hazel. dreamy
had a certain quiet. direct way of
regarding one. Her rather clum8lly
made gown had fell Of homemade
crochet at the neck and wrists
! How the windmill was creaking !!
And how the bare, snow-D2ll branch
es in the front-yard were rattllng !
and what a brisk tattoo the skeleton
suuf1ower by the back door was play
! ing on its panels
But Baby Willie was enjoying
himself. She coald see him running
up and down the " draw dragging
his little wagon after Lin.
| Sac turned away. She sat in the
bio wooden rocker. She CurIed her
self up like confort-lovlng kitten.
And rocking and thinking, some>
how or other, she rocked and thought
the coy kitchen away. She dida't
live in Nebraska, within FIVE miles OF
the town of Bubble. She was not
Bessie Linard at all. She was a
brave woman in frail boat out on
a stormy sea. She was a helmeted