It resembled the high-pooped ship of Columbus,
which he had built so high on purpose, the girls at the seminary said,
so as to have the advantage of spying the New World first; but it also
resembled the long, hollow, bow-shaped Conestoga wagons of which Vesta
had seen so many going past her boarding-school at Ellicott's Mills
before the late new railroad had quite reached there. As she had often
peered into those vast, blue-bodied wagons to see what creatures might
be passengers in their depths, so she took the first opportunity of the
blue scuttle being jolted up by the mourner to discern the face within.
It was a pretty face, with a pair of feeling and also mischievous brown
eyes, set in the attitude of wonder the moment they observed another
woman in the room. The skin was pale, the mouth generous, the nose long,
like Milburn's, but not so emphatic, and the neck, brow, and form of the
face longish, and with something fine amid the wild, cow-like stare she
fixed on Vesta, exclaiming, in a whisper,
"Lord sakes! a lady's yer!"
Then she threw her apron over the Conestoga bonnet again, and held it up
there with her long fingers, and long, plump, weather-stained wrists.
Vesta looked on with the first symptoms of amusement she had felt since
the morning she and her mother laughed at the steeple-crown hat, as they
looked down from the windows of Teackle Hall upon the man already her
husband.
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