Читать книгу From the Land of the Snow-Pearls: Tales from Puget Sound онлайн

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He dropped her hands without a word, and went.

She did not look after him, or listen to his footsteps. She went to the cellar with Nellie, to get the kindling wood, which she arranged in the stove, ready for the match in the morning.

Then she went into her mother’s room. She looked pale in the flickering light of the candle.

“I’ll take care of ma, now, pa,” she said. “You get to bed an’ rest. I know you’re all tired out—plowin’ ever since sun-up! An’ don’t you get up till I call you. I ain’t a bit sleepy. I couldn’t sleep if I went to bed.”

She moistened her fingers with camphor and commenced bathing her mother’s brow.

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It was the fourth day of July, and the fourth hour of the day. Long, beryl ribbons of color were streaming through the lovely Grand Ronde valley when the little girl awoke—so suddenly and so completely that it seemed as if she had not been asleep at all.

“Sister!” she cried in a thin, eager voice. “Ain’t it time to get up? It’s just struck four.”