Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1931-07-02
IN THREE PARTS-PART ONE

IN THREE PARTS-PART ONE
1T WAS cool in the dining room where
she sat with her father and mother
at midday dinner, but through the
open window Nancy could see the heat
running in little wave like water over
the bed of elephants ears outside. Be-
yond the elephants ears were grass
and the grape arbor. with Athens. the
colored coachman, asleep in a chair
tilted against one of the posts. and
Sport, the Irish setter, lying near with
his nose OF his paws and his eyes
cloSed-but not asleep, because
times. without opening his eyes, he
would snap at a fly.
Nancy could hear them buzzing on
the hot air. She could smell the
grapes, sweet in the sun, and the water
on the dust where the sprinkling
wagon had been along. The other way
from Athens and the grape arbor she
could see down the street as far as
the corner. There wasn't a soul in
sight. Every one had gone home from
church.
Sunday was the incest day of all!
People could stay at home then. No
one had to hurry. Her father didn't
have to go back to the Office, and I'M
less he had to rush off to find
body a baby OF one of his patients
got Unexpectedly worse, he could sit
a long time at the table, smoking and
talking with her mother, not about
digging up the old strawberry bed and
putting in a new one, or whether the
stable roof had to be fixed, or things of
that sort, but about things that just
happened to come into their minds
and they wanted to talk about: as
she herself talked with Cissy Dobbs
and Belle Briar, her dearest, most in
innate friends.
Sometimes her father and mother
forgot her when they talked like that,
but she almost never minded. She
didn't mind at all today. 1t was such
a beautiful day. And she was SO hap
Ply inside.
She loved her father in his fresh
linen suit with a sweet shrub bios
som IN his buttonhole. And her mother
| n her pretty white dress. Hannah
looked very nice and tidy, too. She
liked Hannah. And Luella, who used
10 be her nurse when she was little
enough to need one and stayed on
now to help Hannah about the house.
She liked almost everyone and every
thing.
While they waited for Hannah to
take away the plates and bring the
deSSert-blanc mango, made, not with
gelatine, a. most people made it, but
with Irish moss, a much nicer way,
her mother said-she played that the
big naples along the street whose
branches met above it were a green
tunnel out of which a giant might
come, or a fairy, or Cissy Dobbs and
Belle Briar, or anything she wanted
She wanted a band of little people
today, dressed in bright green moss
with trumpet vines for caps and purple
grape skins for stockings to cover their
little round calves, and playing on
dandelion stem pipes. She leaned back
in her chair and closed her eyes all
but a slit and almost saw them.
And then instead, with the sound
of his heavy shoes slapping out loudly
on the cement sidewalk, a nan came
running like somebody gone mad.
Its Lutte Taylor!" her father said
and laid down his napkin and rose
quickly and went out through the hall
to the front porch. People often came
after him In a hurry. He never seemed
to hurry, but he generally got there
before anybody else. Mr.. Lutte Taylor
was town marshal. He was tall and
heavy, and it wasn't like him to run
Nancy and her mother sat on at
the table. Hannah brought in the
blanc mango. But her mother didn't
notice. She sat listening, although she
couldn't hear. She often listened like
that when people came, as If some
thing inside Of her listened, and not
just her ears. Hannah stopped by the
door into the hall to listen, too, and
suddenly she looked scared and began
to cross herself-Hannah was q Roman
Catholic.
Even if she hadn't known from Han
nah, she could have told that some
thing very serious had happened from
the sound of her fathers steps COM
ing back along the hall. There was
something about them at times like
that, that she could tell as she coulC
tell that the horses were thirsty from
the way they whinnied when they came
in sight of home after a long, hot trir
in the country.
He stood In the door looking grave
and ready to go. He had taken hi.
T, hat and medicine case from the ha'
rack and held them In his hand.
There's been an accident" he said
Buck Turpin wa drunk and driving
that mare of his. She ran away again
and Buck fell out and broke his neck
He's dead. The mare was headed fol
some children in the road down BY
Mrs. Whipple's, and Jim Sandersor
tried to stop her. He caught the bridl,
and swerved her away from the chill
dren, but she threw him against s
hitching post and trampled him, ant
. they think he's dying. They've taker
him home. Tell Athens to bring tn,
phaeton there and leave it. / may neet
it,"
He turned and was gone with Mr.
Taylor. Sandersons' was only two block.