Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/87



red cottage house where Stella had lived as a young girl, and until she married Stephen Dallas, was located in an outlying district of Milhampton. The district was known as Cataract Village. The little settlement of houses was named after the Cataract Mills, and the mills were named after a fall of water hidden inside them somewhere, over which they crouched like some great vampire and sucked the strength that made their wheels go round.

Cataract Village was the home of the Cataract Mill employees. Stella's father had worked in the mills ever since he was a boy. Stella was born in one of the ugly three-deckers, close to the mill gate. She was ten years old when her father bought one of the red cottage-houses on the river-bank. She had been proud of the cottage then, and proud of it, too, as she grew older. On each side of the little porch over the front door, every spring, for years, Stella planted morning-glories and wild-cucumber vine, which climbed a string trellis of her own making.

The first time Stephen went to see Stella at the red cottage her vines were profuse with leaf and blossom. She had trained the docile vines to run all over the picket fence that surrounded the little house, and had shrouded the back porch with them; had shrouded with them, too, a latticed