Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/239

Rh afraid I shall cry! Hang it all! I wish there was n't such a streak of woman in me."

Ally, almost as tall as Jim! I could not form any such fancy of her.

She lived in my mind, always in one picture; a little bounding child, with a wreath of scarlet oak-leaves over her shoulders, and golden curls shining in the wind; and whenever I recalled this picture, I recalled as vividly the sharp thrill of electric heat which shot up my arm as I took from her tiny hand the red and green crystal. My life during these three years at home had been so secluded, so dull, so hard, that the memory of the winter at the parsonage was in no danger of being effaced by new impressions. On the contrary, it but brightened day by day. The traveler cannot forget the oasis while he is still in the desert. My mother and sisters were good women. I loved them dutifully, but they gave me no joy; they invested life with no grace, no exhilaration, no stimulus; they were, like me, affectionate, realistic, faithful, plodding; except that I had known Mrs. Allen, had breathed the atmosphere of her house, I should have accepted them as types of the highest sort of women—so true, loyal, upright, steadfast were they; but, I had learned the gospel of a new dispensation; I had been led up to heights whose air had expanded any spiritual nature as the air of great altitudes expands the lungs. All the more that I comprehended my own incapacity to create or even fully