Colonel Carter of Cartersville by Francis Hopkinson Smith
page 60 of 149 (40%)
page 60 of 149 (40%)
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smiled; the same slight, graceful figure; and the same manner--its
very simplicity a reflex of that refined and quiet life she had always led. For hers had been an isolated life, buried since her girlhood in a great house far away from the broadening influences of a city, and saddened by the daily witness of a slow decay of all she had been taught to revere. But it had been a life so filled with the largeness of generous deeds that its returns had brought her the love and reverence of every living soul she knew. While she sat and talked to me of her journey I had time to enjoy again the quaintness of her dress,--the quaintness of forty years before. There was the same old-fashioned, soft gray silk with up-and-down stripes spotted with sprigs of flowers, the lace cap with its frill of narrow pink ribbons and two wide pink strings that fell over the shoulders, and the handkerchief of India mull folded across the breast and fastened with an amethyst pin. Her little bits of feet--they were literally so--were incased in white stockings and heelless morocco slippers bound with braid. But her dress was never sombre. She always seemed to remember, even in her bright ribbons and silks, the days of her girlhood, when half the young men in the county were wild about her. When she moved she wafted towards you a perfume of sweet lavender--the very smell that you remember came from your own mother's old-fashioned bureau drawer when she let you stand on tiptoe to see her pretty things. When you kissed her--and once I did--her cheek was as soft as a child's and fragrant with rose-water. But I hear the colonel's voice outside, laughing with Fitz. |
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