The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-02-21

| OF y summer afternoon, point the1l
whips at it and remark: "That's the
old Purse place, the. home Of an unfo1
tunate family that finally summoned
up gumption to amount to someth-
! in" But they say that because they
t cannot know the history of the fam
lily as VIC have seen it from the in
side, from the night that Mary sat
with her mother in the little room
under the caves, down to the present.
For when we drive past we behold
that abandoned place half-hid now by
| the sumac and the ragged lilacs and
wild rose, an affection for it arises
within us as though we were one of
the family ourselves and the place
meant father and mother and home.
Away back many years ago, before
New England had discarded her we'll
sweeps for windmills and filtered
water systems; before electric cars
had come in; before the Sher-
man Act and the ten-cent magazine
and the machinegun, back in the
days when the ladies rode bicycles
for recreation, Central Park was one
of the attractions Of New York and
all our newspapers were set in nom
parel by tramp printers who knew
their Shakespeare as well as the high
school girl of the present knows who
is married in the movies, back in
those prehistoric times of bay-rum
and Moody-and-S and bustles
dew-drop bonnets and illustrated
wallpaper and camp meetings and
pull door-bells and brown pug dogs
and wood engravings in the maya
zines,-the house was in it's prime and
very much occupied and the windows
were open, especially one window in
the gable of the upper story.
1t was a stuffy little bedroom up
under the caves. It smelled of
weather-dried shingles and cedar
chests and musty closets and old red
carpets. A cheap low-hung yellow
bedstead with a ridiculously high
headboard and ridiculously low
| footboard and bouquet of hideous
brown flowers painted on both, oc-
cupied the corner between the one
south window and the west wall,
| squaring out into the room leaving
space only for a rocker and bureau
with a badly-fawed glass.
Time-discolored wallpaper peeling
in places, Sunday School notices and
small .tin-types and photographs
stuck in the sides of the cheap mirror
chairs and dresser and mantel shelf
indicating feminine occupancy,-these
things the light of the day might
have disclosed. Now they showed
dinly or in fantastic shadow, for il
was late of a soft spring night anc
the room was illumined by moonlight
outlining a long white blotch upor
the floor.
! There were two people in this LITTLE
room tucked away beneath the twist
ed old caves. One was a girl O
twenty years in a night gown sitting
upon the bed with her back agains
the billowing pillows, her fair arm
B clasped about her knees, troubled
eyes fixed upon the shadows. Nea
the head.of the bed in the rocker sa
the mother, a woman with terribl,
redeemed hands. An elbow on tn
narrow sill supported the gnarle,
fingers as they pressed against he
. lips and she stared wistfully out int
the singing Spring night. The othe
, hand fumbled aimlessly, folding an
refolding a pleat in the threadbar
, wrapper across her lap.
Mother and daughter had been 70
! hours so, while the moon went highe
| and higher up the sky and the worl
= sank deeper and deeper into slumbel
A warm night-breeze waited the mus
: lin curtains with which the one DO
4 window was hung. The town cloc
: far over in North Foxboro tolle
: eleven lonesome strokes. Each tim,
: in the rooms below, a similar cloc
c added its fussy, absurd confirmatio
i OF the passing hours.
Her eyes fixed on the moonlit cour
I try spread out down the hill and ava
E before her, the mother listened unit
E the last stroke of both clocks had die