Genre - Western. You are on the page - 16
rade winds by the oppositeside of the court. But Susy did not seem inclined to linger therelong that morning, in spite of Mrs. Peyton's evident desire for amaternal tete-a-tete. The nervous preoccupation and capriciousennui of an indulged child showed in her pretty but discontentedface, and knit her curved eyebrows, and Peyton saw a look of painpass over his wife's face as the young girl suddenly and half-laughingly broke away and fluttered off towards the old garden.Mrs. Peyton looked up and
r, or folded in a blue handkerchief, and laid them, with fingers more or less worn and stubby from hard service, before the consul for his signature. Once, in the case of a very young Madchen, that signature was blotted by the sweep of a flaxen braid upon it as the child turned to go; but generally there was a grave, serious business instinct and sense of responsibility in these girls of ordinary peasant origin which, equally with their sisters of France, were unknown to the English or American
vulgar, and he shrank from the word. To lessen the sting of his disappointment, he pictured her to himself and strove to forget her faults.On the following morning he went to his school very early. The girls were not as obtrusive as they had been. Miss Jessie Stevens did not bother him by coming up every five minutes to see what he thought of her dictation, as she had been wont to do. He was rather glad of this; it saved him importunate glances and words, and the propinquity of girlish forms,
nse of keeping herhere on account of his pride, under the thin pretext of trying to"cure" her. She knew that Sally Atherly of Rough and Ready wasn'tconsidered fit company for "Atherly of Atherly" by his fine newfriends. This and much more in a voice mingling maudlin sentimentwith bitter resentment, and with an ominous glitter in her bloodshotand glairy eyes. Peter winced with a consciousness of thehalf-truth of her reproaches, but the curiosity and excitementawakened by the
d bolder Europeans; and they moved westward, norcould have helped that had they tried. They lived largely andblithely, and died handsomely, those old Elizabethan adventurers,and they lie today in thousands of unrecorded graves upon twocontinents, each having found out that any place is good enoughfor a man to die upon, provided that he be a man.The American frontier was Elizabethan in its quality--childlike,simple, and savage. It has not entirely passed; for bothElizabethan folk and Elizabethan
rubbed a short, thick, stumpy beard, that bore ageneral resemblance to a badly-worn blacking-brush, with the palmof his hand, and went on, "You had a good time, Jinny?""Yes, father." "They was all there?" "Yes, Rance and York and Ryder and Jack." "And Jack!" Mr. McClosky endeavored to throw an expression of archinquiry into his small, tremulous eyes; but meeting the unabashed,widely-opened lid of his daughter, he winked rapidly, and blushedto