“Sister,” piped a little voice at the foot of the stairs, “Mis’ Riley’s boy’s come to find out how soon you’re a-comin’ over to set up with the sick baby.”
“Oh, I’d clear forgot.” Zarelda braided her hair rapidly. “Tell him I’ll be over ’n a few minutes.”
“Now, see here, ’Reldy,” said her mother, getting up and laying her hand affectionately on the girl’s arm, “you ain’t a-goin’ to budge a single step over there to-night. You just get to bed an’ put an arnicky plaster on your forehead—”
Zarelda laughed in a kind of miserable mirth.
“Oh, you can laff, but it’ll help lots. I’ll go over an’ set up with that baby myself.”
“No, you won’t, maw.” She slipped the last pin in her hair and set her hat firmly on the glistening braids. “I said I’d set up with the baby, an’ I will. I ain’t goin’ to shirk just because I’m in trouble.”
She went out into the cool autumn twilight. Her mother followed her and stood looking after her with sympathetic eyes. At last she turned and went slowly into the poor and gloomy house; as she closed the door she put all her bitterness and disappointment into one heavy sigh.
The roar of the Falls came loudly to Zarelda as she walked along rapidly. The dog-fennel was still in blossom, and its greenish snow was drifted high on both sides of her path. Still higher were billows of everlasting flowers, undulating in the soft wind. The fallen leaves rustled mournfully as she walked through them. Some cows were feeding on the commons near by; she heard their deep breathing on the grass before they tore and crushed it with their strong teeth; she smelled their warm, fragrant breaths.
She came to a narrow bridge under the cotton-woods where she saw the Willamette, silver and beautiful, moving slowly and noiselessly between its emerald walls. The slender, yellow sickle of the new moon quivered upon its bosom.
Zarelda stood still. The noble beauty of the night—all its tenderness, all its beating passion—shook her to the soul. Her life stretched out before her, hard and narrow as the little path running through the dog-fennel—a life of toil and duty, of clamor and unrest, of hurried breakfasts, cold lunches and half-warm suppers, of longing for knowledge that would never be hers—the hard and bitter treadmill of the factory life.