FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   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   >>   >|  
girl should be well educated and prepared for any change in her circumstances--but unfortunately she has proved to be rather a wilful young person, and it has been impossible entirely to fulfil his intentions with regard to her. Ah, he wasn't wise always, poor Jonathan, but I never doubted that he meant well at bottom, however things may have appeared. His anxiety in the case of your mother was very beautiful, and if his plans seem to have miscarried, we must lay the blame after all, on the quality of his judgment, not of his heart." "And the girl will be twenty-one next April, I am told?" "Her birthday is the seventeenth, exactly ten years from the date of Jonathan's death." CHAPTER VIII SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate, stopped at Bottom's Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable hearth in the public room. The genius of personality had enabled Betsey Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern in Virginia had passed from the road and the one certain fact relating to the chance comer was that he never came. By combining a store with a public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as the absence of guests. "Thank the Lord, I've never been one to give in to changes!" it was her habit to exclaim. The room was full of tobacco smoke when Abel entered, and as he paused, in order to distinguish the row of silhouettes nodding against the ruddy square of the fireplace, Adam Doolittle's quavering voice floated to him from a seat in the warmest corner. The old man was now turning ninety, and he had had, on the whole, a fortunate life, though he would have indignantly repudiated the idea. He was a fair type of the rustic of the past generation--slow of movement, keen of wit, racy of speech. "What's this here tale about Mr. Jonathan knockin' Archie down an' settin' on him, Abel?" he inquired. "Ain't you got yo' hand in yet, seein' as you've been spilin' for a fight for the last fortnight?" "I hadn't heard of it," replied Abel, his face flushing. "What in hell did he knock Archie down for?" "Jest for shooting' a few birds that might as well have been flying about on yo' land as on his, if thar minds had been set over toward you." "Do you mean Mr. Jonathan got into a quarrel with him for hunting on his land? Why,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   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   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Jonathan
 

public

 

Bottom

 

Archie

 

quarrel

 
floated
 
managed
 

progress

 
Doolittle
 

quavering


warmest

 

corner

 
fortunate
 

ninety

 
turning
 

paused

 
distinguish
 
exclaim
 

silhouettes

 

square


entered

 

fireplace

 

absence

 

guests

 

nodding

 

tobacco

 

flushing

 

shooting

 

replied

 

fortnight


hunting

 
flying
 

spilin

 

rustic

 

generation

 
movement
 

indignantly

 
repudiated
 

inquired

 
settin

knockin
 

speech

 
personality
 
beautiful
 

miscarried

 

mother

 
appeared
 

anxiety

 
twenty
 

quality