The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Spinner in the Sun, by Myrtle Reed

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Title: A Spinner in the Sun

Author: Myrtle Reed

Release Date: June 21, 2004 [eBook #12672]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SPINNER IN THE SUN***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

A SPINNER IN THE SUN

BY

MYRTLE REED

1906

Contents

I. "THE FIRE WAS KIND"
II. MISS MEHITABLE
III. THE PEARLS
IV. "FROM THE DEPTHS OF HIS LOVE"
V. ARAMINTA
VI. PIPES O' PAN
VII. THE HONOUR OF THE SPOKEN WORD
VIII. PIPER TOM
IX. HOUSECLEANING
X. RALPH'S FIRST CASE
XI. THE LOOSE LINK
XII. A GREY KITTEN
XIII. THE RIVER COMES INTO ITS OWN
XIV. A LITTLE HOUR OF TRIUMPH
XV. THE STATE OF ARAMINTA'S SOUL
XVI. THE MARCH OF THE DAYS
XVII. LOVED BY A DOG
XVIII. UNDINE
XIX. IN THE SHADOW OF THE CYPRESS
XX. THE SECRET OF THE VEIL
XXI. THE POPPIES CLAIM THEIR OWN
XXII. FORGIVENESS
XXIII. UNDINE FINDS HER SOUL
XXIV. TELLING AUNT HITTY
XXV. REDEEMED
XXVI. THE LIFTING OF THE VEIL

A Spinner in the Sun

I

"The Fire was Kind"

The little house was waiting, as it had waited for many years. Grey
and weather-worn, it leaned toward the sheltering hillside as though to
gather from the kindly earth some support and comfort for old age.
Five-and-twenty Winters had broken its spirit, five-and-twenty Springs
had not brought back the heart of it, that had once gone out, with
dancing feet and singing, and had returned no more.

For a quarter of a century, the garden had lain desolate. Summers came
and went, but only a few straggling blooms made their way above the
mass of weeds. In early Autumn, thistles and milkweed took possession
of the place, the mournful purple of their flowering hiding the garden
beneath trappings of woe. And at night, when the Autumn moon shone
dimly, frail ghosts of dead flowers were set free from the thistles and
milkweed. The wind of Indian Summer, itself a ghost, convoyed them
about the garden, but they never went beyond it. Each year the panoply
of purple spread farther, mo