Quicksilver Sue

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Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe. Quicksilver Sue

CHAPTER I. SOMETHING EXCITING

CHAPTER II. THE NEW-COMER

CHAPTER III. MARY'S VIEW

CHAPTER IV. EARLY IN THE MORNING

CHAPTER V. THE PICNIC

CHAPTER VI. AT THE HOTEL

CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

CHAPTER VIII. THE CIRCUS

CHAPTER IX. THE LONELY ROAD

CHAPTER X. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

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Sue Penrose went home that day feeling, as she had said to Mary, that something serious had happened. The advent of a stranger, and that stranger a girl not very far from her own and Mary's age, was indeed a wonderful thing. Hilton was a quiet village, and it happened that she and Mary had few friends of their own age. They had never felt the need of any, being always together from babyhood. Mary would never, it might be, feel the need; but Sue was always a dreamer of dreams, and always longed for something new, something different from every-day pleasures and cares. When the schooners came up the river, in summer, to load with ice from Mr. Hart's great ice-houses, Sue always longed to go with them when they sailed. There were little girls on them sometimes; she had seen them. She had gone so far as to beg Mr. Hart to let her go as stewardess on board the "Rosy Dawn." She felt that a voyage on a vessel with such a name must be joy indeed. But Mr. Hart always laughed at her so, it would have been hard to have patience with him if he were not so dear and good. She longed to go away on the trains, too, or to have the pair of cream-colored horses that were the pride of the livery-stable – to take them and the buckboard, and drive away, quite away, to new places, where people didn't have their dresses made over every year, and where they had new things every day in the shop-windows. Her dreams always took her away from Hilton; for it seemed impossible that anything new or strange should ever come there to the sleepy home village. She and Mary had always made their plays out of books, and so had plenty of excitement in that way; but Hilton itself was asleep, – her mother said so, – and it would never wake up. And now, all in a moment, the scene was changed. Here, into the very village street, had come a stranger – a wonderful girl looking like a princess, with jewels and gold chains and shimmering silk; and this girl was going to lead a kind of fairy life at a marvelous place called a hotel, where the walls were frescoed, and you could make up stories about them all the time you were eating your dinner; and the dinner itself was as different as possible from a plain brown leg of mutton, which Katy would always do over three times in just the same order: first a pie, then a fricassee, then mincemeat. Katy was so tiresome! But this girl with the fair hair and the beautiful name would have surprises three times a day, surprises with silver covers, – at least, they looked like silver, – and have four kinds of pie to choose from. And she came from New York! That was perhaps the most wonderful part of all. Sue sat down on her window-seat, gave a long sigh, and fell into a dream of New York.

They drove curricles there, glittering curricles like those in books. (Sue was very fond of books, provided they were "exciting.")

.....

Two people in church, that Sunday, heard little of the excellent sermon. Sue could not even take her usual interest in the great east window, which was generally her mainstay through the parts of the sermon she could not follow. To begin with, there were the figures that made the story; but these were so clear and simple that they really said less, when once one knew the story by heart, than some other features. There were the eight blue scrolls that looked almost exactly like knights' helmets; and when you looked at them the right way, the round blue dots underneath made the knights' eyes; and there you had them, all ready for tournaments or anything. Scruples of conscience obliged Sue to have them always Templars or Knights of Malta, and they only fought against infidels. One of the knights had lost an eye; and the number of ways and places in which he had lost it was amazing: Saladin had run a lance into it at Acre; he had been tilting, just for fun, with Tancred, and Tancred hit him by mistake and put his eye out; and so on and so on. Then, there were the jewels, high up in the window; the small, splendid spots of ruby and violet and gold, which Sue was in the habit of taking out and making into jewels for her own adornment. The tiara of rubies, the long, dangling ear-rings of crystal set in gold, the necklace of sapphires – how often had she worn them to heart's content! And to-day she did, indeed, make use of them, but it was to adorn her new beauty, her new friend. She would bring them all to Clarice! She would put the tiara on her head, and clasp the necklace round her slender neck, and say, "All is yours!" And then she, Sue, would go by dale and would go by down with a single rose in her hair, just like Lady Clare; but Clarice would call her back and say: "Beloved, let us share our jewels and our joys!"

Oh! Sue quivered at the thought, and looked so brightly and earnestly at the minister that the good old man was surprised and pleased, and said to himself that he should hardly have supposed his comments on Ezra would so impress even the young and, comparatively speaking, thoughtless!

.....