Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/25

Rh soon as the few necessary lights were lit in the back of the house) it used to comfort Reba, make her feel less isolated, to be able to look down every night upon the friendly clustering in the valley.

The part of the town which her room overlooked was known as lower Ridgefield. It was there that many of the employees at the mills at the foot of Chestnut Street lived. They were Swedes and Poles, Greeks and Italians mostly. Reba had often wandered there after dark at night and she well knew that in scores of smoky little low-studded kitchens behind those stars in the windows supper was now being prepared. She could almost smell the frying potatoes and onions. She could almost feel the expectancy. The evening held nothing of expectancy for her. Eighty-nine Chestnut Street was lightless, lifeless, starless, a big black empty shell. But within sight of it, within sound, there was eagerness, joy, anticipation—somebody coming home to supper with a laugh and a hearty greeting; somebody coming to call after supper, a lover possibly; somebody coming for a visit next week; a baby expected next month perhaps—plans, preparations, hopes, fears, life!

The ribbons of twinkling mill-windows Reba loved best of all the lights in the valley. She had always been thankful for the mills. When she was a child Aunt Augusta had not allowed her to have a light outside her room when she went to bed. The thought of the big empty front bedrooms, the ceiled cubes of black, awesome silence, across the dark hall, used to fill her with overpowering fear. It was when she was five years old that the mills began running at night, and, Aunt Augusta or no Aunt Augusta, came