A Marsh Island by Sarah Orne Jewett

Author:Sarah Orne Jewett [Jewett, Sarah O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411440470
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

The little place looked very inviting; it was cool and quiet, and held an atmosphere of repose and reticence. The hot kitchen which she had just left kept too many associations with drudgery and monotony; and Temperance was in that mildly aggressive frame of mind which could not be too deeply resented. She was a faithful creature, was Tempy, but full of the notion that it depended upon herself to set the world right.

The apple-trees seemed to grow closer than ever about the windows. Their boughs were bending low with a great weight of fruit, and made the good woman sigh to think of the apple paring and drying which were near at hand. Doris knew only the favorable side of farm life, after all; she had chosen her work almost always, and every day there was some task that was lighter, pleasanter, than the rest. The mother's heart grew heavy as she pictured her only child growing faded and changed year after year, tired and worried more and more with the hard round and petty responsibility. Doris had it in her to grow beyond it all, as she herself had once; to do something else and something better; to be somebody, as she told herself with pathetic disappointment. Men folks were slow at understanding how a woman felt about such dull doings and lack of entertainment, the long winters and the endless, busy days of summer. She wished that Doris might be spared all this, even if Doris could grow fastest and be happiest in the very conditions which had fettered her own self.

The thought was suggested to her, as she surveyed the little room, that different uses might be made of the same materials. She could not help recognizing the charm of the place, although its furnishing was selected from her own disdained belongings. She left the three-cornered chair where she sat, and stepped about softly, glancing at the sketches which were displayed about the room. It was a strange thing to be looking at such familiar surroundings through another person's eyes, and she smiled at the likeness of one corner of the farm after another; the roofs and chimneys, the windows, the kitchen, the seldom-used front door, with the clustered rose-bushes almost blockading the way, and the row of bull's-eye panes of glass overhead. There was even the side of the small room where Mr. Dale still slept, with the sword over the narrow mantel-piece, and the table and chair near the window, and even the faint coloring of the landscape outside. She thought he must be some famous artist in disguise, as she saw the cleverness of the little pictures, all so amazing and impossible to a looker-on like herself. But most interesting of all was a diminutive looking-glass that hung on the yellow-washed wall, with a withered twig of cider-apples put into its frame. She had given him the mirror herself; the glass was spotted and dull, and she had been amused with his satisfaction and gratitude.

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