Читать книгу Patience Sparhawk and Her Times - Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton - Страница 18

Table of Contents

The next morning prizes were distributed. Patience took most of them, but Rosita was still the sensation of the hour, although she had not passed an examination. At noon she had a luncheon party. She sat at the head of her table in a white dotted Swiss frock and Roman sash, and talked faster than she had ever talked in her life before. Altogether she was by no means the Rosita of twenty-four hours ago.

Mrs. Thrailkill had prepared a luncheon of old time Spanish dishes, and hovered, large and brown and placid, about a table loaded with chickens under mounds of yellow rice, tamales, and dulces. Patience, between Manuela and a young cousin of Rosita’s, was not unhappy. Her prizes lay on the window seat, she liked good things, and was infected with the gaiety of the hour. True, she wore her old muslin frock and a plaid sash made from an ancient gown of her mother’s, and the rest of the girls looked like a bed of newly blossomed flowers; but at fifteen the spirits rise high above trifles.

When she started for home she was as light of heart as her more favoured mates; but in the wood a dire affliction smote her. One of her teeth began to ache. She had seen her mother many times with head tied up and distorted face, and had wondered scornfully how any one could make a fuss about a mere tooth. Now, however, when her own suddenly felt as if impaled on a needle, she uttered a loud wail, and ran toward home as fast as her legs could carry her. She found her mother similarly afflicted, and a bottle of drops on the kitchen table. Mrs. Sparhawk condescended to apply the remedy, and the agony left as suddenly as it had come.

After supper Patience went over to her tower, and as ever floated between Carmel Valley and the stars, enveloped with warm ether, which swirled to towers and turrets inhabited by a projection of herself which she saw only as a lover. Unfortunately all this rapture was enacted in a strong draught. Even Solomon uttered a sound once or twice which resembled a sneeze. Again Patience’s tooth was punctured by a red-hot needle. Her castles vanished. She caught her cheek with her hand, stumbled down the winding stair, and flew across the valley, the needle developing into a screw.

The house was quiet, the kitchen dark. She lit a candle and searched frantically for the drops. They were not to be found. Then it occurred to her that her mother must have taken them to her room, and she ran up the stair.