FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152  
153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   >>   >|  
ot have to be reckoned with. In spite of the fact that she was generally known as "Mrs. Jim," many people forgot that Marietta had a husband, for he was never visible now-a-days. But Marietta never forgot, never for one single instant, the wasted figure in the easy chair at the window above the shop, the pale sunken face with the shining eyes, turned always toward the stairway the instant her foot touched the lower step. The look of radiant welcome that greeted her as often as her head appeared above the opening on a level with the uneven deal floor, that look was always worth coming up for. She did not bring her work and sit upstairs with Jim, because there was but one small window in the dingy, slant-roofed loft, that served as bed-chamber, kitchen, and parlor, and she knew he liked to sit at the window and watch the panorama of the street below. The broad, sunny Springtown thoroughfare, with its low, irregular wooden structures, likely, at any moment, to give place to ambitious business "blocks"; with its general air of incompleteness and transitoriness brought into strong relief against the near background of the Rocky Mountains, was alive with human interest. Yet, singularly enough, it was not the cowboy, mounted on his half-broken bronco that interested Jim; not the ranch wagon, piled high with farm produce, women, and children; not even the Lame Gulch "stage,"--a four-seated wagon, so crowded with rough-looking men that their legs dangled outside like fringe on a cowboy's "shaps,"--none of these sights made much impression on the sick man at his upper window. The work-a-day side of life was far too familiar to Jim to impress him as being picturesque or dramatic. What he did care for, what roused and satisfied his imagination, was what was known in his vocabulary as "style." It was to the "gilded youth" of Springtown that he looked for his entertainment. He liked the yellow fore-and-aft buckboards, he enjoyed the shining buggies, especially when their wheels were painted red; dog-carts and victorias ranked high in his esteem. He knew, to be sure, very little about horses; their most salient "points" escaped him: he gave indiscriminate approval to every well-groomed animal attached to a "stylish" vehicle, and the more the merrier! It is safe to declare that he was a distinctly happier man from that day forward on which Mr. Richard Dayton first dazzled the eyes of Springtown with his four-in-hand. This happen
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152  
153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
window
 

Springtown

 

instant

 

shining

 

cowboy

 
forgot
 
Marietta
 

familiar

 
impress
 

satisfied


imagination

 

vocabulary

 
roused
 

dramatic

 
picturesque
 

crowded

 
seated
 
children
 

dangled

 

impression


sights

 

fringe

 

stylish

 

attached

 

vehicle

 

merrier

 

animal

 

groomed

 

indiscriminate

 

approval


declare

 
Dayton
 

dazzled

 

happen

 

Richard

 
happier
 

distinctly

 
forward
 

escaped

 
points

buggies
 

enjoyed

 
wheels
 
buckboards
 

looked

 

entertainment

 
yellow
 

painted

 
horses
 

salient