The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mettle of the Pasture, by James Lane Allen

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Title: The Mettle of the Pasture

Author: James Lane Allen

Release Date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #12482]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE METTLE OF THE PASTURE***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE METTLE OF THE PASTURE

BY

JAMES LANE ALLEN

Author of "The Choir Invisible," "A Kentucky Cardinal," etc., etc.

New York, 1903

To My Sister

PART FIRST

I

She did not wish any supper and she sank forgetfully back into the
stately oak chair. One of her hands lay palm upward on her white
lap; in the other, which drooped over the arm of the chair, she
clasped a young rose dark red amid its leaves--an inverted torch of
love.

Old-fashioned glass doors behind her reached from a high ceiling to
the floor; they had been thrown open and the curtains looped apart.
Stone steps outside led downward to the turf in the rear of the
house. This turf covered a lawn unroughened by plant or weed; but
over it at majestic intervals grew clumps of gray pines and
dim-blue, ever wintry firs. Beyond lawn and evergreens a flower
garden bloomed; and beyond the high fence enclosing this, tree-tops
and house-tops of the town could be seen; and beyond these--away in
the west--the sky was naming now with the falling sun.

A few bars of dusty gold hung poised across the darkening spaces of
the supper room. Ripples of the evening air, entering through the
windows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at the
nape of her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passing
along her round arms under the thin fabric of her sleeves.

They aroused her, these vanishing beams of the day, these arriving
breezes of the night; they became secret invitations to escape from
the house into the privacy of the garden, where she could be alone
with thoughts of her great happiness now fast approaching.

A servant entered noiselessly, bringing a silver bowl of frozen
cream. Beside this, at the head of the table before her
grandmother, he placed scarlet strawberries gathered that morning
under white dews.