Mr. Motherwell did not like vines
or trees around a house. They were apt to attract lightning
and bring vermin.
Potatoes grew from the road to the house; and around the
front door, as high as the veranda, weeds flourished in
abundance, undisturbed and unnoticed.
Behind the cookhouse a bed of poppies flamed scarlet
against the general sombreness, and gave a strange touch
of colour to the common grayness. They seemed out of
place in the busy farmyard. Everything else was there
for use. Everybody hurried but the poppies; idlers of
precious time, suggestive of slothful sleep, they held
up their brazen faces in careless indifference.
Sam had not planted them--you may be sure of that. Mrs.
Motherwell would tell you of an English girl she had had
to work for her that summer who had brought the seed with
her from England, and of how one day when she sent the
girl to weed the onions, she had found her blubbering
and crying over what looked to Mrs. Motherwell nothing
more than weeds. The girl then told her she had brought
the seed with her and planted it there. She was the
craziest thing, this Polly Bragg. She went every night
to see them because they were like a "bit of home," she
said. Mrs. Motherwell would tell you just what a ridiculous
creature she was!
"I never see the beat o' that girl," Mrs. Motherwell
would say. "Them eyes of hers were always red with
homesickness, and there was no reason for it in the world,
her gettin' more wages than she ever got before, and
more'n she was earnin', as I often told her.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67