Читать книгу The Open Question: A Tale of Two Temperaments - Elizabeth Robins - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Although this visit was the only one Ethan was destined to pay to New Plymouth before he came to man's estate, he carried back with him to Boston at the holiday's end something more than an intimate understanding with his father's people, and a vivid picture of the outer aspect of life in the house of his grandmother.

Out of his fear of Aunt Jerusha that first evening grew the habit of Valeria's visiting his room ten minutes or so after he had said good-night. During those first evenings, when he was allowed a candle to go to bed by, this small attention on his aunt's part was for the ostensible purpose of putting out the light and opening his windows. Later on she went for no better reason than that the child would be expecting her. Absent-minded dreamer as she was, after the second evening of Ethan's stay she never forgot what became her kindly custom.

On this particular evening, as she sat among the litter in the blue room, her acute ears caught a faint sound of sobbing. She hurried into the adjoining chamber, and found all dark and silent, Ethan breathing regularly, apparently asleep. She bent over in the faint moonlight to kiss him, and found his face wet with tears.

"My dear! Then it was you?"

"Me?" he inquired, in a steady voice.

"Yes. Why were you crying?"

After a pause:

"I thought the walls were so awful thick," he said, as if answering her question with all circumstance.

"Shall I light the candle again?"

"No, thank you," he said, sedately; "I can see the moon through the locust-tree."

She went to the window, and leaning her folded arms on the wide seat, she repeated softly, as she looked out: