: Stonepastures by Stuart Eleanor - City and town life Fiction; Pennsylvania Fiction; Mines and mineral resources Fiction

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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t's invested--but still--it's spent."

She saw that the men would have to take the matter up for her. At first anger had nerved her, but now she felt weakly despairing. It seemed to her that there was no use in effort to set right circumstances so awry, until, as she said, "things had stopped happening."

"Well, you're a thief, anyway," she said, "and I'd fight you if I had any pith in me!"

Quarry raised himself. "That's you all over," he remarked sadly. "I've seen you leap on Jarlsen quick as a wicked cat; and a lady as lifts a hand to a half-dead man is no lady. You have made my life very profane, Emma. I don't find in you the flavour of a godly woman, Emma Butte," he added with a final effort at dignity. "You're a--a--mean girl!"

Emma rose, and, standing, looked him over thoroughly. No idea of law came to aid her ignorant helplessness. She understood now the saying that women were "put upon." Some girls would have cried, but Emma had one sweet drop in the bitter draught. She would have to move to the Stonepastures, but by so doing she could pay the doctor, even though she had to shave again.

BREAKING UP A HOME.

"It is better to live under God's sky than under a roof when there's no luck there."

YOU and I, knowing the use of pen, ink, and paper, and the efficacy of latter-day postal systems, must remember that there are degrees of education; also, that all the methods of communication in well organized communities are as unknown to the ignorant, Americo-alien population of such places as Soot City as is the fate of nations to the speculative schoolboy. Emma needed Black's counsel, but she did not think of the post as a means of getting a letter to a man in her own town. She reasoned that post-office people would slight mail matter not destined to go by train to other cities. So her anxious heart kept her waking to catch the light, that she might get away in secret to Black's house and there put her case in his ever-open and ever-busy hands.

Youthful weariness demands sleep. Emma was young and overweary, and, as a consequence, overslept.

It was in the fear that calamity might have stolen another march on her that she dressed herself. She had about her a neatness that enraged the down-at-heel disheartened, of which there are so many in labouring communities.

"The world," she thought, "has thumped me till I ain't got half the spring I hed to start on; and that's the reason I'm goin' to dress up. I'll wear cuffs till I've got to sell 'em, and a collar, ef I do have to shave for a livin'."

She was glad she had not had to get breakfast, for she had to tend Jarlsen. The day was wet, and his hurts seemed the sorer for the damp. When she had done all for him she laid her hand on his, but the dread of packing her wedding things was making war on her energies. She felt she could not rest till she had packed the white gown out of sight and mind. Before now she had held a private service of tears over her six wedding presents. Miss Bentley had given her a jacket edged with good fur, and her sister had given her some fine stockings; but her lover's gift meant more to her than any other inanimate thing. It certainly meant more than bread, for she would have starved before she sold it, and died in happiness had her eyes but met it as they closed finally.

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