Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1899-11-07
BORROWED PLUMES.

BORROWED PLUMES.
Mabel Roscommon, a high school teach
er, had come to the farm for the summer
vacation and for rest. The dignifled sim
plicity of farm life appealed to her. Grad
ually a passion Of love awoke in her for
the little, ordinary, useful everyday things
the needful work repeated at the appro-
pirate hour, the changing magic Of morn
and noon and evening, the restful dis
tances of down and sea, the intimate fore
grounds of hedge and orchard. At first
she read a good deal, but gradually more
and more time was spent with Mrs. Fry.
Mabel followed her in and out to the dairy,
to the kitchen, to feed the pigs, to collect
the eggs, and the eyes Of the faded, middle
aged m grew tender, though her
words were always the explanatory com.
monplace OF the mournful biographical.
But one day-it was the day when Miss
Roscommon first churned the butter
Mrs. Fry sighed and said:
"My little Alice would ha' been about
your age if she'd lived. I own I should
Lb oCdlA1 AlhCo w Ad UtukuU uCE W
churn."
twas that night that Mabel kissed Mrs.
Fry when she said "good night, " and al
most wished as she crept between the cold,
lavendered sheets that she had been born
a farmers daughter.
When Robert Fry came home-the only
son of his mother, the farmers wife
Mabel shared in the hustle of glad prepa-
ration that heralded his coming. He was
in business in London, but he was coming
home for his holiday, his mother said.
"But he hates the business, she went
on. "He got a scholarship to go to Oxford
for he's very clever, my dear-but it was
not enough to keep him there and it was
the year we did so badly with the wheat,
so father couldn't spare enough to let him
go. So then Bob gave in and he said, All
right, I'll go into. business, for I don't
want to stay at farming So his uncle
took him into the mantles, where he might
be doing well. But I wish he'd never gone
to school, I do. Then he'd have been con
tent to stay and help his father about the
old place that's belonged to the Frys no
one knows how long. You can see their
names in the c~hurchyard."
~ Wuo III uAC C1AuAo1A L L. UllO lAOoS
grown headstones that Miss Roscommon
not only saw the James of many dead and
gone Frys, but made the acquaintance Of
the newcomer. He came to her across the
field that lay between the house and the
church, and she could see his fair hair
shining in the sun. He was tall and hand
some, she thought.
my mother sent me to tell you that tea
is ready. It's half an hour earlier than
usual. Yes, I've just come down. 1t all
seems very beautiful after London, doesn't
itp"
"It's 30 beautiful, - said Mabel, "that I
am beginning to wonder how I shall ever
be able to leave it"
He walked beside her for awhile in ST.
lence. Then he said:
"You were at Girton, my mother tells
me. Don't you find this sort of thing
strange after the stirring intellectual life
there?'
She laughed a little.
81 don't think we were very intellec-
tual'-she began.
II feel SO much all I have missed, " he
said. IF only my father had not sown
wheat that year"
eyes," she said, II know. 1t was very
hard"
She was interested in the boy, for though
he was of her W age he seemed to her
infinitely young. His naive, laundering
anxiety to let her see that he, too, knew all
about the intellectual life, his respect for
her as a Girton girl and, above all, a GER
tain wistful sadness about his blue eyes
stirred her half amused sympathy. His
presence seemed to promise a new interest
to life at the farm.
The promise was fulfilled. He attached
himself frankly to Miss Roscommon's
apron strings-walked with her, drove her
in the market cart, sat with her under the
gray apple boughs and talked without
ceasing. He was we'll read, was acquaint-
ed with modern as we'll as classic litera-
ture. He quoted almost necessarily.
When he was not quoting, he talked of
authors, Of editions, Of style and of form.
How should she know that he had his own
dreams which he managed to disguise un-
der these quotations from the. dreams of
othersp Miss Roscommon5 was the first
educated woman he had ever met, and he
seemed agonizedly anxious to lose no
chance Of showing her that he, too, had
been educated; that he was not merely
the foolfSh boy she might have expected to
find in the "son of the house, at a farm.
At first this sensitive, insistent egotism
amused Miss Roscommon, then it irritated
Der, and at the end of three days she was
as near hating Robert Fry as she had ever
been to hating any one-even the least
loved professor at Cambridge. Yet, after
MI, it was not possible to Mabel quite to
hate any one, nor was it possible that
Robert Fry should ever be by any n
quite hated. She had a very manly vein
Of tolerance-and he q timid, appealing
manner, which, if not feminine, was at
least childlike. But his quotations got on
her nerves, and the quiet charm Of her
holiday was shattered. 1t was on the
fourth evening that she spoke. He had
been standing beside her, looking at the
sea, and suddenly broke the calm of the
great silence to quote Matthew Arnold's
lines:
1.-THE bea Of faith
Was thus once at the full, and round earth's
shore
Lay like the folds Of a bright girdle furled,
But now
"Iwish you wouldn't, " she interrupted,
almost peevishly.
His blue eyes turned on her with the
appealing look a child's wear when n
whom 1t trusts speaks with sudden harsh
ness.
"Don't look at me like that" she said,
her patience and her pretty manners CIV
ing way together under the strain of that
absurd appeal. Its only that I came
into the country to rest, and
II see; you don't like me to talk to you.
I am very sorry. I never meant to bore
you. It's very good Of you to tell me
straight out" He raised his cap and
turned to leave her.
ooh. don,tl'' she said AGAIN UT am ~,