The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Village Ophelia and Other Stories
by Anne Reeve Aldrich

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Title: A Village Ophelia and Other Stories

Author: Anne Reeve Aldrich

Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14978]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Transcriber's Note: Some words which appear to be typos are printed
thus in the original book. A list of these possible misprints follows:
enthuiasms
fragant
increduously
insistance
trival]

A VILLAGE OPHELIA

BY
ANNE REEVE ALDRICH

NEW YORK:
_W. Dillingham Co., Publishers_,
MDCCCXCIX.

CONTENTS

A VILLAGE OPHELIA

A STORY OF THE VERE DE VERE

A LAMENTABLE COMEDY

AN AFRICAN DISCOVERY

AN EVENING WITH CALLENDER

A VILLAGE OPHELIA

On the East end of Long Island, from Riverhead to Greenport, a distance
of about thirty miles, two country roads run parallel.

The North road is very near the Sound and away from the villages; lonely
farm-houses are scattered at long intervals; in some places their number
increases enough to form a little desolate settlement, but there is
never a shop, nor sign of village life. That, one must seek on the South
road, with its small hamlets, to which the "North roaders," as they are
somewhat condescendingly called, drive across to church, or to make
purchases.

It was on the North road that I spent a golden August in the home of
Mrs. Libby. Her small gray house was lovingly empaled about the front
and sides by snow-ball bushes and magenta French-lilacs, that grew
tenderly close to the weather-worn shingles, and back of one sunburnt
field, as far as the eye could see, stretched the expanse of dark,
shining scrub-oaks, beyond which, one knew, was the hot, blue glitter of
the Sound.

Mrs. Libby was a large iron-gray widow of sixty, insatiably greedy of
such fleshly comforts as had ever come within her knowledge--soft
cushions, heavily sweetened dishes, finer clothing than her neighbors.
She had cold eyes, and nature had formed her mouth and jaw l