Читать книгу At the Sign of the Fox. A Romance онлайн

72 страница из 81

“I want to be something more than furniture in our new home, if it is ever finished, and we succeed in getting out of what Lucy Dean calls this ‘elaborated parlour-car method of living.’ Yes, mother, I’m getting what you call a restless streak again. I think I’m going to pick up my brushes”—and then a serious, almost sad expression crossed her face as she added, “if they will let me.”

“So Cousin Keith’s going away,—going to be married! I wish she could have done the second without the first. I like to think of her at the farm just as she used to be. You know it’s my farm now, and I’ve always planned to go back there some summer, and really work, for if anything could put life in my brush, it would be to live in my ‘River Kingdom.’ I’d much rather do that than have a large country place, such as father plans, though of course Gilead is too quiet and out of touch with things for him, and the farm is too small a bit for his energy to work upon. Cousin Keith has been very thrifty,—‘five cows, a farm horse, chickens, ducks, seed potatoes, cordwood, etc.,’ (all mine, too, because the deed says ‘inclusive of all live stock, and furnishings’). Last of all she lists ‘Tatters, the family dog, whose race has been on the soil as long as we ourselves; if he can’t transfer himself to the newcomers not of the name, Dr. Russell has promised to take him down to Oaklands. Please understand, Cousin Pamela, that Tatters doesn’t rank with live stock,—he is a person, and must be treated as such!’”