Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/54

 winder of the parlor lookin' out sadly, and, though the settin' sun wuz on her face, it couldn't lighten the shadder on it. I went up to her and laid my hand on her shoulder, and I see then that her eyes had been fixed on the pretty cottage Dr. Marsh had jest bought, the prettiest place in Jonesville, a sort of a stun gray house settin' back in its green trees with a big lawn like velvet in front, all dotted with flowering shrubs and handsome trees. But I never let on that I knew what she wuz lookin' at. But I sez, as I laid my hand tenderly on her shoulder:

"Dear, I shan't see you agin for some time, as we're goin' to make a few visits, if I can get Josiah started."

She lifted her big sad eyes to mine, they wuz full of tears, and she didn't need to say a word. Her tragedy wuz writ there, the loss of everything she had loved and held dearest in her life; she didn't need to speak, I read it all, it wuz coarse print to me, I didn't need specs. And she read what she see in my eyes, the deep love and sympathy I wouldn't profane by puttin' into words. No, I jest bent down and kissed her and she me, and, havin' passed the compliments with the new Miss Martin, we went home, and the next day we started on our tower.

Well, as we approached Pennell Hill, the abode of Evangeline Allen Piddock, I looked anxiously at myself and pardner and picked off some specks of lint from his coat collar and my mantilly and anxiously smoothed the creases of my umbrell and tried to fold it up closter and more genteel, but I could not, it would bag, but I felt a or in approachin' her home, for I had studied her poems a sight and almost worshipped 'em, and through them the writer, you know sunthin' as it reads,