She took a part of her savings, sewed up in the front of her gown, to fall back on, but her capable hands were the real funds on which she depended. She traveled to Denver, and there went out to service, and afterwards worked in a restaurant. She found light work in plenty, and in between jobs took her heart’s fill of sight-seeing. She saw Pike’s Peak and the Grand Canyon. By the end of the winter she had earned enough to take her to San Francisco. Here she had a sister- and brother-in-law who ran a good restaurant, and Mary joined forces with them. A year brim-full of life followed, but after this her two own sisters, her only surviving near relations, fell ill, and she came home to nurse them. It was then that she bought her farm, near her old home in Ridgefield, planning that the three should spend their old age together. Both sisters, though, died; but my indomitable Mary keeps the farm almost as well as a man could, and her strong nature, tremendously intent on the present moment, never feels loneliness.
As I said, she is not much of a church-goer, but she is devout in her own way, and plans to go back to San Francisco, to the convent where a cousin of hers is now Abbess, and there
“Get ready to die; and a good thing to do, too, first-rate!”
I never knew anyone so indifferent about dress as Mary; she is quite pretty in her way, and must always have been so, but she puts on whatever is nearest at hand, and will hamper her least. It is a fact that I saw her out in the rain the other day, taking in clothes from the line, with a length of brown oil-cloth tied about her stout person, by way of an apron, with marline, and an empty shredded-wheat box, split up on one side, on her head for a hat.
The lower meadows were still yellow with the gold of buttercups as we drove home, and where the swales ran lower and richer we saw tall Canada Lilies, Loose-strife, and purple and white fringed orchids, in among the Meadow-rue, and light green ferns and ripening grasses. There was Blue-eyed Grass, too, and Iris. It was all rich and fragrant, and butterflies were hovering about the lilies; and as if this were not enough, a breath of woodsy sweetness, much like the fragrance of Lady’s Slippers, met us from a mixed meadow and cranberry bog, and there were flocks of rose-pink Arethusas all delicately poised among the grasses.
Meadow-larks were rising all about, singing their piercingly sweet notes. The children were picking wild strawberries, and the blackberries flung out long springing sprays down the perfected June roadways. Their blossoms are very like small single sweet-briar roses.
ON TRESUMPSCOTT POND