Vesty of the Basins

by Sarah Pratt McLean Greene

I overtook Vesty in the lane; she was gathering flowers in Sunday pastime for the baby.

She turned to look at me with quiet gladness, kindness.

"I love to hear Captain Seabale. He doesn't come very often," said she, "but he makes me cry."

"I believe he made me cry," I answered. I watched her shaking a handful of flowers over the laughing boy. "How far do you think pity could ever go, Vesty?"

"Why?"—there was that high, grave study of me in her eyes, that haunting thought that I was sly! But for all her pains, too simple was she! No discovery; only the beautiful Basin unconsciousness. "Christ never said where to stop, did He?"

XX

SOCIAL DIVERSIONS AT THE "POST-OFFICE"

Leafless and brown are the trees, but the Basin has diviner glories than at midsummer, in colors unspeakable of sea and sky, of wild-sailing cloud, of sunset and of moon.

There come great news of Notely. In pursuance of which, "Did ye ever notice," said Captain Leezur, sitting on the log in the late sunshine, ambrosially sucking a nervine lozenge; "did ye ever notice, major, how 't all the great folks, or them 't 's risin' tew be great—how 't they all comes from a squantum place like this?"