The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rise of Roscoe Paine, by Joseph C. Lincoln

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Title: The Rise of Roscoe Paine

Author: Joseph C. Lincoln

Release Date: June 3, 2006 [EBook #3137]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISE OF ROSCOE PAINE ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

THE RISE OF ROSCOE PAINE

By Joseph C. Lincoln

CHAPTER I

"I'm going up to the village," I told Dorinda, taking my cap from the
hook behind the dining-room door.

"What for?" asked Dorinda, pushing me to one side and reaching for the
dust-cloth, which also was behind the door.

"Oh, just for the walk," I answered, carelessly.

"Um-hm," observed Dorinda.

"Um-hm" is, I believe, good Scotch for "Yes." I have read that it
is, somewhere--in one of Barrie's yarns, I think. I had never been in
Scotland, or much of anywhere else, except the city I was born in, and
my college town, and Boston--and Cape Cod. "Um-hm" meant yes on the
Cape, too, except when Dorinda said it; then it might mean almost
anything. When Mother asked her to lower the window shade in the
bed-room she said "Um-hm" and lowered it. And, five minutes later, when
Lute came in, loaded to the guards with explanations as to why he had
forgotten to clean the fish for dinner, she said it again. And the
Equator and the North Pole are no nearer alike, so far as temperature
is concerned, than those two "Um-hms." And between them she had others,
expressing all degrees from frigid to semi-torrid.

Her "Um-hm" this time was somewhere along the northern edge of Labrador.

"It's a good morning for a walk," I said.

"Um-hm," repeated Dorinda, crossing over to Greenland, so to speak.

I opened the outside door. The warm spring sunshine, pouring in, was a
pleasant contrast and made me forget, for the moment, the glacier at my
back. Come to think of it, "glacier" isn't a good word; glaciers move
slowly and that wasn't Dorinda's way.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Work," snapped Dorinda, unfurling the dust cloth. "It's a good mornin'
for that, too."

I went out, turned the corner of the house and found Lute sound asleep
on the wash bench behind