The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
page 59 of 232 (25%)
page 59 of 232 (25%)
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her for a moment.
"To-morrow, if you're a good child, you shall go for a drive. Think--a drive in an enchanted island. It's Shakespeare's _Tempest_ island,--did I tell you I heard that on the boat? We might run across Caliban any minute, and I think at least we'll find 'M' and 'F', for Miranda and Ferdinand, cut into the bark of a tree somewhere. We'll go for a drive every day, every single day, till we find it. You'll see." Mrs. Newbold's eyes moved from the sea and rested, perplexed, on her daughter. "Katherine, how can we afford to drive every day? How can we be here at all? I don't understand it. I'm sure there was nothing left to sell except the land out west, and Mr. Seaton told us last spring that it was worthless. How did you and Randolph conjure up the money for this beautiful journey that is going to save my life?" The girl bent impulsively and kissed her with tender roughness. "It is going to do that--it is!" she cried, and her voice broke. Then: "Never mind how the money came, dear,--invalids mustn't be curious. It strains their nerves. Wait till you're well and perhaps you'll hear a tale about that land out west." Day after day slipped past in the lotus-eating land whose unreality makes it almost a change of planets from every-day America. Each day brought health with great rapidity, and soon each day brought new friends. Mrs. Newbold was full of charm, and the devotion between the ill mother and the blooming daughter was an attractive sight. Yet the girl was not light-hearted. Often the mother, waking in the night, heard a shivering sigh through the open door between their rooms; often she surprised a harassed look in the young eyes which, with all that the |
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