The Country of the Pointed Firs Sarah Orne Jewett (bill gates best books TXT) đ
- Author: Sarah Orne Jewett
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As they came up the walk together, laughing like girls, I fled, full of cares, to the kitchen, to brighten the fire and be sure that the lobster, sole dependence of a late supper, was well out of reach of the cat. There proved to be fine reserves of wild raspberries and bread and butter, so that I regained my composure, and waited impatiently for my own share of this illustrious visit to begin. There was an instant sense of high festivity in the evening air from the moment when our guest had so frankly demanded the Oolong tea.
The great moment arrived. I was formally presented at the stair-foot, and the two friends passed on to the kitchen, where I soon heard a hospitable clink of crockery and the brisk stirring of a teacup. I sat in my high-backed rocking-chair by the window in the front room with an unreasonable feeling of being left out, like the child who stood at the gate in Hans Andersenâs story. Mrs. Fosdick did not look, at first sight, like a person of great social gifts. She was a serious-looking little bit of an old woman, with a birdlike nod of the head. I had often been told that she was the âbest hand in the world to make a visit,ââ âas if to visit were the highest of vocations; that everybody wished for her, while few could get her; and I saw that Mrs. Todd felt a comfortable sense of distinction in being favored with the company of this eminent person who âknew just how.â It was certainly true that Mrs. Fosdick gave both her hostess and me a warm feeling of enjoyment and expectation, as if she had the power of social suggestion to all neighboring minds.
The two friends did not reappear for at least an hour. I could hear their busy voices, loud and low by turns, as they ranged from public to confidential topics. At last Mrs. Todd kindly remembered me and returned, giving my door a ceremonious knock before she stepped in, with the small visitor in her wake. She reached behind her and took Mrs. Fosdickâs hand as if she were young and bashful, and gave her a gentle pull forward.
âThere, I donât know whether youâre goinâ to take to each other or not; no, nobody canât tell whether youâll suit each other, but I expect youâll get along some way, both having seen the world,â said our affectionate hostess. âYou can inform Misâ Fosdick how we found the folks out to Green Island the other day. Sheâs always been well acquainted with mother. Iâll slip out now anâ put away the supper things anâ set my bread to rise, if youâll both excuse me. You can come anâ keep me company when you get ready, either or both.â And Mrs. Todd, large and amiable, disappeared and left us.
Being furnished not only with a subject of conversation, but with a safe refuge in the kitchen in case of incompatibility, Mrs. Fosdick and I sat down, prepared to make the best of each other. I soon discovered that she, like many of the elder women of the coast, had spent a part of her life at sea, and was full of a good travelerâs curiosity and enlightenment. By the time we thought it discreet to join our hostess we were already sincere friends.
You may speak of a visitâs setting in as well as a tideâs, and it was impossible, as Mrs. Todd whispered to me, not to be pleased at the way this visit was setting in; a new impulse and refreshing of the social currents and seldom visited bays of memory appeared to have begun. Mrs. Fosdick had been the mother of a large family of sons and daughtersâ âsailors and sailorsâ wivesâ âand most of them had died before her. I soon grew more or less acquainted with the histories of all their fortunes and misfortunes, and subjects of an intimate nature were no more withheld from my ears than if I had been a shell on the mantelpiece. Mrs. Fosdick was not without a touch of dignity and elegance; she was fashionable in her dress, but it was a curiously well-preserved provincial fashion of some years back. In a wider sphere one might have called her a woman of the world, with her unexpected bits of modern knowledge, but Mrs. Toddâs wisdom was an intimation of truth itself. She might belong to any age, like an idyl of Theocritus; but while she always understood Mrs. Fosdick, that entertaining pilgrim could not always understand Mrs. Todd.
That very first evening my friends plunged into a borderless sea of reminiscences and personal news. Mrs. Fosdick had been staying with a family who owned the farm where she was born, and she had visited every sunny knoll and shady field corner; but when she said that it might be for the last time, I detected in her tone something expectant of the contradiction which Mrs. Todd promptly offered.
âAlmiry,â said Mrs. Fosdick, with sadness, âyou may say what you like, but I am one of nine brothers and sisters brought up on the old place, and weâre all dead but me.â
âYour sister Dailey ainât gone, is she? Why, no, Louisa ainât gone!â exclaimed Mrs. Todd, with surprise. âWhy, I never heard of that occurrence!â
âYesâm; she passed away last October, in Lynn. She had made her distant home in Vermont State, but she was making a visit to her youngest daughter. Louisa was the only one of my family whose funeral I wasnât able to attend, but âtwas a mere accident. All the rest of us were settled right about home. I thought it was very slack of âem in Lynn not to fetch her to the old place; but when I came to hear about it, I learned that theyâd recently put up a very elegant monument, and my sister Dailey was always great for show. Sheâd just been out to see the monument the week before she was taken down, and admired it so much
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