Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1914-11-20

She Sat by the Stove and Read the
old now and, Aunt Mary, this amt a place
for him He's a nice little fellow and
l hate for him to get rough and he will
il he stays here. I'll do the best l can
and earn money to help keep him but |
want he should come and live with you
II won't have him. said Mary
Chavah. aloud.
he could come alone with a tag all
right and l could send his things by
freight. He amt got much. You couldn't
help but like him and hate for him to
get rough. Please answer and oblige your
loving nephew. JOHN BLOOD.
Mary kept reading the letter and
staring out into the snow. Her sister
Lily's boy-they wanted to send him to
her. Lily's boy and Adam Blood's-
the man whose son she had thought
would be her son. 1t was twenty years
ago that he had been coming to the
house-this same house-and she had
thought that he was coming to see
her, had never thought of Lily at all
till Lily had told her of her own be-
trothal to him. 1t hurt yet. 1t had
hurt freshly when he had died. five
years ago. Now Lily was dead. and
Adams eldest son, John, wanted to
send this little brother to her. to have.
II won't take him." she said a great
many times. and kept reading the let
ter and staring out into the snow.
For Lily she had no tears-she sell
dom had tears at all. But after a little
while she was conscious OF a weight
through her and In her, aching In her
throat, her breast, her body. She rose
fire, then to the freedom of the window
against which the snow lay piled. then
she sat down in the place where she
worked beside her patterns. The gray
shawl still bound her head, and it was
still in her mind that she must go to
the barn and lock 1t. But she did not
go-she sat In the darkeping room with
all her past crowding it.
That first day with Adam at the
Blood's picnic. given at his homecom-
ing. They had met with all that peril
Gus, ready made intimacy which a
school friendship of years before had
allowed. As she had walked beside
him she had known well what he was
going to mean to her. She remembered
the moment when he had contrived to
ask her to wait until the others went.
SO that he might walk home with her.
And when they had reached home,
there on the porch, where she had just
shaken the rugs in the snow, Lily had
been sitting, a stool-one of the stools
now at length banished to the she'd
holding the hurt ankle that had kept
her from the picnic. Adam had stayed
an hour. and they had sat beside Lily.
He had come again and again. and they
had always sat beside Lily. Mary re-
membered that those were the days
when she was happy in things-in the
house and the look of the rooms and of
the little garden from the porch and of
the old red cushioned rocking chairs
on the tiny "stoop." She had loved her
clothes and her little routines. and all
these things had seemed desirable and
ultimate because they two were shar-
ing them. Then one day Mary had
joined Lily and Adam there on the
porch, and Lily had been looking up
with new eyes, and Mary had searched
her face, and then Adams facet and
they had all seemed In a sudden naked
ness. and Mary had known that a
great place was closed against her.
Since then house and porch and gar
den and routines had become like those
of other places. She had always been
shut outside something. and always
she had borne burdens. The death of
her parents. gaddies of need. worst of
all a curious feeling that the place
closed against her was somehow her
self-that. so to say. she and herself
had never once met. She used to say
that to herself sometimes. There's
two of me. and we don't meet-we
don't meet"
And now he wants me to take her
boy and Adams" she kept saying. I'll
never do such a thing-never.r
She thought that the news of Lily's
death was what gave her the strange,
bodily hurt that had seized her tile
news that what she was used to was
gone; that she had no sister: that the
days Of their being together and all the
tasks Of their upbringing were inisl,
Then she thought that the reln-rt.,.
ing Of those days of her ~happins>s III
her pain, and the ache of what mpsis
have been and of what never was. INT
come to torture her again. X IL III
feeling was rather the weight OF ss,li.
imminent thing. the ravage of sn,ps
thing that grew with what 1t feu ou
the grasp upon her of something th.s
would not let her CO.
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