The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1898-09-01

iIsaS 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, a
voice had only that moment scared up
ward, calling "Strawber-ees! strawber-
ees! Ripe, red, strawber- eesr'
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 Bless
ing Farm, with the red berries per-
fuming 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 hope
less, and a ceaseless struggle for
bread, won on 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 wooden trough, among its
lower stones.
And below the wall, "the thirty
acre moving" spread ont like an i'm
mense emerald velvet carpet, with me
two. story cream-colored house lifting
its plazzaed front at the extreme end,
just where the shaded lane began,
that led from the Blessing Farm out
into the village road.
She, the poor orphan girl, had been
offered this comfortable home; and she
had refused it-for what? For dream
of fame, which had left her toiling in
this hot garret, while in the black
trunk yonder the book which was to
have made her fortune, refused by one
publisher after another, was lying, till
she could find courage to thrust it in
to the fire.
Scarcely two years" she sighed,
rocking herself to and fro. "And
Maurice has sold the old farm and
gone to Colorado; and 1 am here, lone
ly, disappointed, old before my time.
Oh, if L could only live that day over
again, and be as wise as l am now!
For now I know that I love him-now,
when 1t 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
expenses of her 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
Deepdene.
Il will stay only one day." she
thought "And I will work all the
harder, after I 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 at the
dear old farm before it is in the hands
of strangers, 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 village.
4 railway whisked her across the
hill-road from Torrington. Once she
would have made the journey in q
yellow stage" drawn by four horses,
with John Colney, crossest and most
disagreeable Of stage-drivers, on the
box.
! The village, too, was srlartened and
freshened up-new houses, new faces,
new iron fence around the small,
oval park that graced the centre Of the
town; new names above the gilded
fronts of the shops; new set Of
giggling misses, on their way to the
new browu-stone academy, which
stood where she had once thought it
an honor to attend the district school,
in a plain, one-story structure of faded
brick.
No doubt all these alterations were
for the better; but they made her
heart ache with sense OF loss un-
speakable.
And she turned into the shaded lane
that led only to the Blessing Farm,
dreading to see the old home desc
Grated by the strangers hand.
No! there it stood, as she had al
ways known it. The very picture OF
home comfort, the centre of all those
modest Injuries that well-to-do
! farmer, of all other men, may most
easily command.