Diana - Warner Susan

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so much as looked that way. However, we can do without art on a June afternoon.

      The door of the lean-to looked towards the road, and so made a kind of front door to the kitchen which was within. The door-sill was raised a single step above the rough old grey stone which did duty before it; and sitting on the doorstep, in the shadow and sunlight which came through the elm branches and fell over her, this June afternoon, was the person whose life story I am going to try to tell. She sat there as one at home, and in the leisure of one who had done her work; with arms crossed upon her bosom, and an air of almost languid quiet upon her face. The afternoon was quiet-inspiring. Genial warm sunshine filled the fields and grew hazy in the depth of the hills; the long hanging elm branches were still; sunlight and shadow beneath slept in each other's arms; soft breaths of air, too faint to move the elms, came nevertheless with reminders and suggestions of all sorts of sweetness; from the leaf-buds of the woods, from the fresh turf of the meadows, from a thousand hidden flowers and ferns at work in their secret laboratories, distilling a thousand perfumes, mingled and untraceable. Now and then the breath of the roses was quite distinguishable; and from fields further off the delicious scent of new hay. It was just the time of day when the birds do not sing; and the watcher at the door seemed to be in their condition.

      She was a young woman, full grown, but young. Her dress was the common print working dress of a farmer's daughter, with a spot or two of wet upon her apron showing that she had been busy, as her dress suggested. Her sleeves were still rolled up above her elbows, leaving the crossed arms full in view. And if there is character in faces, so there is in arms; and everybody knows there is in hands. These arms were after the model of the typical woman's arm; not chubby and round and fat, but moulded with beautiful contour, showing muscular form and power, with the blue veins here and there marking the clear delicate skin. Only look at the arm, without even seeing the face, and you would feel there was nervous energy and power of will; no weak, flabby, undecided action would ever come of it. The wrist was tapering enough, and the hand perfectly shaped, like the arm; not quite so white. The face—you could not read it at once; possibly not till it had seen a few more years. It was very reposeful this afternoon. Yet the brow and the head bore tokens of the power you would expect; they were very fine; and the eyes under the straight brow were full and beautiful, a deep blue-grey, changing and darkening at times. But the mouth and lower part of the face was as sweet and mobile as three years old; playing as innocently and readily upon every occasion; nothing had fixed those lovely lines. The combination made it a singular face, and of course very handsome. But it looked very unconscious of that fact.

      Within the kitchen another woman was stepping about actively, and now and then cast an unsatisfied look at the doorway. Finally came to a stop in the middle of the floor to speak.

      "What are you sittin' there for, Diana?"

      "Nothing, that I know of."

      "If I was sittin' there for nothin', seems to me I'd get up and go somewheres else."

      "Where?" said the beauty languidly.

      "Anywhere. Goodness! it makes me feel as if nothin' would ever get done, to see you sittin' there so."

      "It's all done, mother."

      "What?"

      "Everything."

      "Have you got out the pink china?"

      "Yes."

      "Is your cake made?"

      "Yes, mother; you saw me do it."

      "I didn't see you bakin' it, though."

      "Well, it is done."

      "Did it raise light and puffy?"

      "Beautiful."

      "And didn't get burned?"

      "Only the least bit, in the corner. No harm."

      "Have you cut the cheese and shivered the beef?"

      "All done."

      "Then I think you had better go and dress yourself."

      "There's plenty of time. Nobody can be here for two hours yet."

      "I wouldn't sit and do nothin', if I was you."

      "Why not, mother? when there is really nothing to do."

      "I don't believe in no such minutes, for my part. They never come to me. Look at what I've done to-day, now. There was first the lighting the fire and getting breakfast. Then I washed up, and righted the kitchen and set on the dinner. Then I churned and brought the butter and worked that. Then there was the dairy things. Then I've been in the garden and picked four quarts of ifs-and-ons for pickles; got 'em all down in brine, too. Then I made out my bread, and made biscuits for tea, and got dinner, and eat it, and cleared it away, and boiled a ham."

      "Not since dinner, mother?"

      "Took it out, and that; and got all my pots and kettles put away; and picked over all that lot o' berries, I think I'd make preserves of 'em, Diana; when folks come to sewing meeting for the missionaries they needn't have all creation to eat, seems to me. They don't sew no better for it. I believe in fasting, once in a while."

      "What for?"

      "What for? Why, to keep down people's stomach; take off a slice of their pride."

      "Mother! do you think eating and people's pride have anything to do with each other?"

      "I guess I do! I tell you, fasting is as good as whipping to take down a child's stomach; let 'em get real thin and empty, and they'll come down and be as meek as Moses. Folks ain't different from children."

      "You never tried that with me, mother," said Diana, half laughing.

      "Your father always let you have your own way. I could ha' managed you, I guess; but your father and you was too much at once. Come, Diana do—get up and go off and get dressed, or something."

      But she sat still, letting the soft June air woo her, and the scents of flower and field hold some subtle communion with her. There was a certain hidden harmony between her and them; and yet they stirred her somehow uneasily.

      "I wonder," she said after a few minutes' silence, "what a nobleman's park is like?"

      The mother stood still again in the middle of the kitchen.

      "A park!"

      "Yes. It must be something beautiful; and yet I cannot think how it could be prettier than this."

      "Than what?" said her mother impatiently.

      "Just all this. All this country; and the hayfields, and the cornfields, and the hills."

      "A park!" her mother repeated. "I saw a 'park' once, when I was down to New York; you wouldn't want to see it twice. A homely little mite of a green yard, with a big white house in the middle of it; and homely enough that was too. It might do very well for the city folks; but the land knows I'd be sorry enough to live there. What's putting parks in your head?"

      But the daughter did not answer, and the mother stood still and looked at her, with perhaps an inscrutable bit of pride and delight behind her hard features. It never came out.

      "Diana, do you calculate to be ready for the sewin' meetin'?"

      "Yes, mother."

      "Since they must come, we may as well make 'em welcome; and they won't think it, if you meet 'em in your kitchen dress. Is the new minister comin', do you s'pose?"

      "I don't know if anybody has told him."

      "Somebody had ought to. It won't be much of a meetin' without the minister; and it 'ud give him a good chance to get acquainted. Mr. Hardenburgh used to like to come."

      "The new man doesn't look much like Mr. Hardenburgh."

      "It'll be a savin' in biscuits, if he ain't."

      "I used to like to see Mr. Hardenburgh eat, mother."

      "I

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