The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ragged Lady, Complete, by William Dean Howells

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Title: Ragged Lady, Complete

Author: William Dean Howells

Last Updated: February 27, 2009
Release Date: September 1, 2006 [EBook #4270]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAGGED LADY, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

RAGGED LADY.

By William Dean Howells

Part 1.

I.

It was their first summer at Middlemount and the Landers did not know
the roads. When they came to a place where they had a choice of two,
she said that now he must get out of the carry-all and ask at the house
standing a little back in the edge of the pine woods, which road they
ought to take for South Middlemount. She alleged many cases in which
they had met trouble through his perverse reluctance to find out where
they were before he pushed rashly forward in their drives. Whilst she
urged the facts she reached forward from the back seat where she sat,
and held her hand upon the reins to prevent his starting the horse,
which was impartially cropping first the sweet fern on one side and then
the blueberry bushes on the other side of the narrow wheel-track. She
declared at last that if he would not get out and ask she would do it
herself, and at this the dry little man jerked the reins in spite of
her, and the horse suddenly pulled the carry-all to the right, and
seemed about to overset it.

"Oh, what are you doing, Albe't?" Mrs. Lander lamented, falling helpless
against the back of her seat. "Haven't I always told you to speak to the
hoss fust?"

"He wouldn't have minded my speakin'," said her husband. "I'm goin' to
take you up to the dooa so that you can ask for youaself without gettin'
out."

This was so well, in view of Mrs. Lander's age and bulk, and the
hardship she must have undergone, if she had tried to carry out her
threat, that she was obliged to take it in some sort as a favor; and
while the vehicle rose and sank over the surface left rough, after
building, in front of the house, like a vessel on a chopping sea, she
was silent for several seconds.

The house was still in a raw state of unfinish, though it