Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/17

Rh upturned, and stared out at the lemon-colored sky, pinkening now a little around the edges, with a flickering star embedded just above where the glow was brightest.

Upturned palms irritated Aunt Augusta.

"For the land's sake, what is there to see out that window, anyhow?" she demanded, after enduring them for five minutes in silence.

"Nothing," Reba replied, which was true enough. The town lay on the other side of the house. From this window there were only rolling white fields, crossed and recrossed by uncertain stone-walls that lost themselves, now and then, in the drifted snow; and on the crest of the next hill, one of those solitary New England farms—a small, white house and a big, gaunt, unpainted barn behind—which does so much to make the country look bleak and dreary.

"Nothing! Humph!" sniffed Aunt Augusta, and fell to stitching at a terrific speed, so fast indeed that the machine purred as if it had a dozen cylinders inside to make it go instead of two wide, flat-footed feet placed squarely on a corrugated iron pedal. "My goodness!" she ejaculated sharply, bringing the machine to a sudden stop. "I should think you had a beau, by the way you moon." She glanced at Reba, over her steel-bowed spectacles.

The younger woman made no reply. To have denied the existence of a lover would be lacking in humor. But she might have said something. Her persistent silences were a source of annoyance to Aunt Augusta.

"When we were twenty-five," her aunt went on, "things were rather different, I can tell you that.