FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121  
122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   >>   >|  
uses to come without being brought, if he wished to come," said the mother. "But she isn't in his mind enough to make him. He goes away and doesn't think anything more about her. She's a child. She's a good child, and I shall always say it; but she's nothing but a child. No, she's got to forget him." "Perhaps that won't be so easy." "No, I presume not. And now your father has got the notion in his head, and he will move heaven and earth to bring it to pass. I can see that he's always thinking about it." "The Colonel has a will of his own," observed the girl, rocking to and fro where she sat looking at her mother. "I wish we had never met them!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "I wish we had never thought of building! I wish he had kept away from your father's business!" "Well, it's too late now, mother," said the girl. "Perhaps it isn't so bad as you think." "Well, we must stand it, anyway," said Mrs. Lapham, with the grim antique Yankee submission. "Oh yes, we've got to stand it," said Penelope, with the quaint modern American fatalism. X. IT was late June, almost July, when Corey took up his life in Boston again, where the summer slips away so easily. If you go out of town early, it seems a very long summer when you come back in October; but if you stay, it passes swiftly, and, seen foreshortened in its flight, seems scarcely a month's length. It has its days of heat, when it is very hot, but for the most part it is cool, with baths of the east wind that seem to saturate the soul with delicious freshness. Then there are stretches of grey westerly weather, when the air is full of the sentiment of early autumn, and the frying, of the grasshopper in the blossomed weed of the vacant lots on the Back Bay is intershot with the carol of crickets; and the yellowing leaf on the long slope of Mt. Vernon Street smites the sauntering observer with tender melancholy. The caterpillar, gorged with the spoil of the lindens on Chestnut, and weaving his own shroud about him in his lodgment on the brick-work, records the passing of summer by mid-July; and if after that comes August, its breath is thick and short, and September is upon the sojourner before he has fairly had time to philosophise the character of the town out of season. But it must have appeared that its most characteristic feature was the absence of everybody he knew. This was one of the things that commended Boston to Bromfield Corey during th
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121  
122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

summer

 
mother
 

father

 

Boston

 

Lapham

 

Perhaps

 
saturate
 
vacant
 

yellowing

 
delicious

crickets

 

freshness

 

intershot

 

frying

 

westerly

 

weather

 

stretches

 

grasshopper

 
blossomed
 

autumn


sentiment

 

shroud

 

philosophise

 

character

 
season
 

fairly

 
September
 

sojourner

 

appeared

 
characteristic

commended

 

things

 

Bromfield

 

feature

 

absence

 

breath

 
melancholy
 

tender

 

caterpillar

 

gorged


observer

 

sauntering

 

Vernon

 

Street

 
smites
 
lindens
 

Chestnut

 

August

 
passing
 

records