A Silent Singer

	PAGE
A Silent Singer	[ 1]
An Old Hulk	[ 35]
The Gentleman Who Was Going To Die	[ 71]
Old Myra’s Waiting	[ 93]
“In Paris, Suddenly——”	[ 161]
Two Buds	[ 173]
The Ambition of MacIlhenny	[ 197]
John Hickey: Coachman	[ 217]
Black Watch	[ 241]
Dinah	[ 257]
Life’s Aftermath	[ 293]

A Silent Singer

It had been a hot day, and the minister had brought us, my mother and myself, from the city to his country home, in a mysterious, antediluvian species of buggy. Of all the race of men it is the country minister alone who can discover this particular breed of buggy. They are always gifted with strange powers of endurance; never being purchased until they have seemingly reached the point of dissolution, they will thereafter, for years and years, shake and totter, and rattle and rock, carrying all the time not only people but almost every conceivable kind of merchandise, from a few pounds of groceries to a pumpkin or a very youthful calf, without coming one step nearer their final wreck.

This special buggy could hold one person in comfort, two in discomfort and three in torture. I had been the party of the third part in that day’s ride, and worn out and crumpled and dusty, we passed from darkness into a room full of lamplight and faces. I was trying to support myself steadily upon a pair of legs so recently aroused from dumb sleep that they had barely reached the ticklish stage, and the ten thousand needle-prickling power was in full blast when the Rev. Hyler introduced me to his seven sons. My dazzled eyes and tired mind made them seem full seventeen to me, and they were so big and rough and noisy, I hung my head, confused, disappointed, frightened even, and then I felt the gentle pressure of her hot little hand on mine.

I raised my childish eyes and saw the sweetness of the smile upon her pallid face, saw it dawn upon her lips, pass swiftly to the dimple in her cheek, hide a moment there, only to reappear the next dancing in the sapphire blueness of her eyes—saw and mentally bowed down and worshipped her from that moment. Physically, I clung close to her burning hand and gave her back a smile of such astounding breadth and frankness as must have revealed to her my entire dental economy; and when, a few minutes later, I learned that she whispered because her voice was gone—lost forever, I felt such a passion of love and pity for her, such a longing to spare her suffering, that, but for its absurdity, I could have wounded my own flesh that I might bear the pain in her name. Grown-ups do not always understand the strength of feeling young things are capable of.

Next day we two round pegs began fitting ourselves into the new holes prepared for us, and though they were not absolutely square, they were still far enough from roundness to be very uncomfortable holes indeed. My mother began her never-ending duties of housekeeper. Mrs. Hyler had broken down from overwork and sick-nursing, and I having, as my mother once declared, “as many eyes as had a peacock’s tail,” began my almost unconscious observations of a new form of poverty. (I already had a really exhaustive knowledge of the subject both from observation and from personal experience, and I had come to the conclusion that the bitterness of poverty was greatly influenced by the manner in which it was accepted. I had known abject, ragged poverty to enjoy streaks of real merriment on comparatively comfortable occasions, while higher up in life those who openly acknowledged their poverty seemed only to suffer its inconvenience and to know nothing of the shame and humiliation of those who tried to hide theirs by agonizing makeshifts.) Here I found it was accepted in sullen silence, but, nevertheless, bitter resentment lowered on every face save my dear Miss Linda’s.

She always turned to those eighteen watchful, loving eyes a sweetly-smiling, pallid face with serene brows; but I saw her sometimes when smile and serenity were both gone and her face was anguished.

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