That was all she said, all she felt capable of saying. The twisted thoughts, emotions and revulsions which surge in us as we watch the inexplicable workings of Fate are often difficult of expression. But, after mother had kissed her good night and gone, she lay pondering for a long time. Life is curiously unfair. That Tess and Arthur should have got the candy for which SHE suffered, that the very hours she'd been shut up with shame and disgrace THEY were gorging themselves, seemed her climactic crown of sorrow.
Yes, life was queer...
Almost not worth while to try to be athletic-she didn't really like being athletic, anyway... she hoped they'd had the ordinary human decency to give Gypsy just a little bit... Gypsy was a darling... that wavy tail and those bright soft eyes and the white star.. . but you don't have to be really athletic to ride a pony—you don't have to wear breeches and do things like that... Arthur wasn't so much, anyway—he had freckles and red hair and there was nothing romantic about him... Sir Galahad would never have been so scared of Mr. Picker—he wouldn't have shoved the blame off onto a maiden in distress... No, and she didn't think the King of Spain would, either... Or Rev. MacGill... There were lots of things just as good as being athletic... there were... lots of things...
A moonbeam crept up the white sheet, to kiss the eyelids closed in sleep.
CHAPTER VIII. A HAPPY DOWNFALL
Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?—A fitful tongue of fickle flame. And what is prominence to me, When a brown bird sings in the apple-tree? Ah, mortal downfalls lose their sting When World and Heart hear the call of Spring! You ask me why mere friendship so Outweighs all else that but comes to go?... A truce, a truce to questioning: “We two are friends,” tells everything. I think it vile to pigeon-hole The pros and cons of a kindred soul. (From Melissa's Improvement on Certain Older Poets.)
The year Melissa was a high school Junior was fated to be an unforgettable epoch. In the space of a few short months, all mysteriously interwoven with their causes and effects, their trials turning to glory, their disappointments and surcease inexplicable, came revelations, swift and shifting, or what is really worth while in life. Oh, Life! And oh, when one is sixteen years old! That is an age, as many of us can remember, one begins really to know Life—a complex and absorbing epoch.
The first of these new vistas to unspread itself before Missy's eyes was nothing less dazzling than Travel. She had never been farther away from home than Macon City, the local metropolis, or Pleasanton, where Uncle Charlie and Aunt Isabel lived and which wasn't even as big as Cherryvale; and neither place was a two-hours' train ride away. The most picturesque scenery she knew was at Rocky Ford; it was far from the place where the melons grow, but water, a ford and rocks were there, and it had always shone in that prairie land and in Missy's eyes as a haunt of nymphs, water-babies, the Great Spirit, and Nature's poetics generally—the Great Spirit was naturally associated with its inevitable legendary Indian love story. But when Aunt Isabel carelessly suggested that Missy, next summer, go to Colorado with her, how the local metropolis dwindled; how little and simple, though pretty, of course, appeared Rocky Ford.
Colorado quivered before her in images supernal. Colorado! Enchantment in the very name! And mountains, and eternal snow upon the peaks, and spraying waterfalls, and bright-painted gardens of the gods—oh, ecstasy!