She wondered a little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her.
Then she concluded that it was out of the question.
Who would suspect a mean, unsociable Old Lady, who had no friends,
and who gave only five cents to the Sewing Circle when everyone
else gave ten or fifteen, to be a fairy godmother, the donor of
beautiful party dresses, and the recipient of gifts from romantic,
aspiring young poets?
V. The September Chapter
In September the Old Lady looked back on the summer and owned to herself
that it had been a strangely happy one, with Sundays and Sewing Circle
days standing out like golden punctuation marks in a poem of life.
She felt like an utterly different woman; and other people thought
her different also. The Sewing Circle women found her so pleasant,
and even friendly, that they began to think they had misjudged her,
and that perhaps it was eccentricity after all, and not meanness,
which accounted for her peculiar mode of living. Sylvia Gray always
came and talked to her on Circle afternoons now, and the Old Lady
treasured every word she said in her heart and repeated them over
and over to her lonely self in the watches of the night.
Sylvia never talked of herself or her plans, unless asked about them;
and the Old Lady's self-consciousness prevented her from asking any
personal questions: so their conversation kept to the surface of things,
and it was not from Sylvia, but from the minister's wife that the Old Lady
finally discovered what her darling's dearest ambition was.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76