FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   >>   >|  
addition built on through generations by many men and women. Here lay the history, unread, of the family of Roger Gale. Inside there were steps up and down from one part to another, queer crooks in narrow passageways. The lower end was attached to the woodshed, and the woodshed to the barn. Above the house a pasture dotted with gray boulders extended up to a wood of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the house. The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond. At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill. Here was peace for Roger's soul. The next day at dawn he awakened, and through the window close by his bed he saw no tall confining walls; his eye was carried as on wings out over a billowy blanket of mist, soft and white and cool and still, reaching over the valley. From underneath to his sensitive ears came the numberless voices of the awakening sleepers there, cheeps and tremulous warbles from the birch copse just below, cocks crowing in the valley, and ducks and geese, dogs, sheep and cattle faintly heard from distant farms. Just so it had been when he was a boy. How unchanged and yet how new were these fresh hungry cries of life. From the other end of the house he heard Edith's tiny son lustily demanding his breakfast, as other wee boys before him had done for over a hundred years, as other babies still unborn would do in the many years to come. Soon the cry of the child was hushed. Quiet fell upon the house. And Roger sank again into deep happy slumber. Here was nothing new and disturbing. Edith's children? Yes, they were new, but they were not disturbing. Their growth each summer was a joy, a renewal of life in the battered old house. Here was no huge tenement family crowding in with dirty faces, clamorous demands for aid, but only five delightful youngsters, clean and fresh, of his own blood. He loved the small excitements, the plans and plots and discoveries, the many adventures that filled their days. He spent hours with their mother, listening while she talked of them. Edith did so love this place and she ran the house so beautifully. It was so cool and fragrant, so clean and so old-fashioned. Deborah, too, came under the spell. She grew as lazy as a cat and day by day renewed her strength from the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

family

 
valley
 

woodshed

 

disturbing

 

children

 

slumber

 
breakfast
 
demanding
 

lustily

 
hungry

hundred

 

hushed

 

babies

 

unborn

 

talked

 

mother

 

listening

 

beautifully

 
renewed
 

strength


fragrant

 

fashioned

 

Deborah

 

filled

 
crowding
 

tenement

 
clamorous
 

battered

 

growth

 
summer

renewal

 

demands

 

excitements

 

discoveries

 

adventures

 

delightful

 
youngsters
 

voices

 

rushing

 

broken


widened

 

quieter

 

stream

 

extended

 
boulders
 
unread
 

history

 

Inside

 
addition
 

generations