Instead of the Thorn. Clara Louise Burnham

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СКАЧАТЬ Mrs. Porter loved the very word. Always when the train left the North Station in Boston she sank into her chair with a sense of shaking off the cares of life; and to-day the smile she gave the porter as he placed her suit-case beside that chair was valued, even by him, more than the coin she placed in his hand.

      The cares of life in her case were represented by a busy music studio, where, luckily for her, every half-hour was a busy one; but there were the pupils who didn't supply their own steam, but had to be urged laboriously up the steeps of Parnassus; there were those in whom a voice must be manufactured if it ever appeared; and those whose talent was great and whose application was fitful; those whose vanity was fatuous, and those whose self-depreciation was a ball and chain; those who had been badly taught and who must be guided through that valley of humiliation where bad habits are overthrown. Taking into account all the trials of the profession, any voice teacher in Mrs. Porter's place to-day might give a Boston and Maine porter a seraphic smile as if he were opening to her the gate leading to Elysian Fields where pianos and vocalises have no place.

      "That woman sure do look happy," was the soliloquy of this particular red-cap as he pocketed the silver and left the car.

      The traveler leaned back in her chair with a glorious sense of unlimited leisure, and prepared to recognize the landmarks grown as familiar to her as the scenes on the Illinois Central suburban railroad.

      Probably none of her pupils save Linda Barry, although there were other hero-worshipers among them, would deny that Mrs. Porter's nose was too short, her mouth too wide, and her eyes too small; but the kindly lips revealed such even teeth, and the eyes such light, that no one commented on Maud Porter's looks, nor cared what shape her nose was. One saw, as she leaned back now in her chair, that her brown hair was becoming softly powdered with gray. Her eyes half closed as the express train gained speed, flying away from care, and her humorous lips curved as she considered the mild adventure on which she was embarking.

      When Miss Belinda Barry had visited her brother during the holidays, she had dropped some remarks concerning her home which had roused Mrs. Porter's curiosity and interest. The idea had been growing on her all the spring that, instead of going out as usual to one of the islands in Casco Bay, she would explore this corner of the mainland from whence had sprung the Chicago financier. She had not, however, communicated since with Miss Barry. She did not wish that lady to feel any responsibility for her.

      A picture of Linda's aunt rose before her mind as she reflected. Tall, thin, with a scanty coiffure and long onyx earrings. These ornaments Miss Barry had donned in her youth, and declined to renounce with the fashion; so that when they began to be worn again by the daring, they gave her the effect, as Linda had confided to her teacher, of being "the sportiest old thing in town."

      The naturally severe cast of Miss Barry's features, Mrs. Porter had always observed, rather increased in severity when the good lady looked at her niece, and that holiday visit had been a strain on both sides.

      It was happy history repeating itself when the traveler alighted to-day at the Union Station in Portland. The same involuntary wonder rose within her that any face could look harassed, ill, or care-worn here. It was Maine. It was the enchanted land! the land of pines, of unmeasured ocean, of supernatural beauty in sunset skies; of dreamful days and dreamless nights.

      She smiled at her own childish ignoring of the seamy side of existence as evidenced in the look of many of the crowd hurrying through the busy clearing-house of the station. She beamed upon a porter who took her to a waiting carriage – a sea-going hack, Linda would have called it – and drove to a hotel. She would not risk arriving in the evening in a locality where the only inn might be that of the Silver Moon.

      Till supper time – it would be supper, she considered exultantly – she wandered up Congress Street to some of her favorite shops. Undeniably there are other streets in Portland, but to the summer visitor the dignified city is much like a magnified village with one main street where its life centers.

      Maud Porter entered one shop after another, repressing with difficulty her longing to tell every clerk how happy she was to be back, and enjoying all over again the good manners and obligingness of everybody.

      Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, she made her inquiries and took her train. It was one that stopped at every station, and when, after three quarters of an hour of this sauntering, she alighted on a desolate and unpromising platform, her first thought was to inquire in the small depot for the first train back. The little house seemed to be deserted for the moment, however, and she observed an elderly man with a short white beard, who, with trousers tucked into his boots and thumbs hooked in his armholes, stood at a little distance, regarding speculatively the lady in the gray suit and floating gray veil. Near where he was standing a carryall was waiting by the platform.

      In Mrs. Porter's indecision she looked again within the weather-beaten station, then across at the motionless, weather-beaten face.

      "There doesn't seem to be any one in here," she said.

      "I cal'late Joe's out in the shed luggin' wood," responded the man. His pleasant tone, his drawl, the sea-blue of his eyes, caused her to move toward him as the needle to the magnet. She knew the type. All the suspended Maine exhilaration rushed back upon her. How clean he was! How rough! How adorable!

      "I've come," she said, gazing up into the eyes regarding her steadily, and said no more.

      "Want me to haul ye?" he asked kindly, not changing his position.

      "Yes."

      "Where to?"

      "I don't know." The sunlight of her smile evoked a grin from him.

      "Come on a chance, have ye?"

      "Yes, So did you, I should think. Nobody but little me getting off here."

      "No, 't ain't time for 'em really to come yet."

      "Who? Summer people, do you mean?"

      "Yes. Folks is beginnin' to think they like it down here; but we don't take summer boarders to the Cape, ye'll have to know that."

      A prodigious wink enveloped one sea-blue eye.

      "Oh, I'm so sorry." Mrs. Porter's smile vanished in her earnestness. "Wouldn't – wouldn't your wife, perhaps – "

      "Haven't got none."

      "Oh, I'm sorry."

      "I ain't. Ben glad on't always. Hain't ever repented."

      "Then you mean you never were married."

      "That's what I mean." The speaker nodded as if to emphasize a triumph.

      "But isn't there some one in your – your village – I suppose it's a village, isn't it?"

      "Shouldn't wonder if 'twas."

      The visitor tasted that "'t wa-a-as" with appetite, and echoed it mentally.

      "Some one who would take a boarder if – if I want to stay?" The monotonous landscape was not inviting.

      "Wall, for accawmodation's sake I cal'late they would; but it's only for accawmodation's sake, ye understand." The speaker winked again. "The Cape don't take boarders."

      "Oh, I see," laughed the visitor. "But you must have expected somebody. You're here."

      "Usually git somebody. I haul 'em for hard cash, not for accawmodation's sake, so ye see I'm on hand."

      "I СКАЧАТЬ