In the house, Mother Maggie was happy when little Mike was tied in his
chair, and a bar put in the doorway to keep him from crawling into the
attractive water, if he should break loose; and when the door was bolted
on the railroad side, he was allowed to gaze through the window at the
engines smoking and thundering by all day, and fixing each blazing red
eye on him at night--an entrancing spectacle to the child. And when the
still younger Pat was tucked up in bed sucking a moist rag, with sugar
tied up in it, her world was all right, and at rest.
But it would have taken a person of considerable penetration, or as
Maggie said one who knew all "the ins and the outs" to see the peculiar
good luck of _this_ day. The water was swashing round within a few feet
of the door. Some of the workmen had moved their beds to the space
between the tracks, which was piled up with kitchen utensils, and looked
like a second-hand store.
In these days of devotion to antiques, we hear dealers in such wares say
that things are more valuable for being carefully used. This would not
apply to Twinrip's relics. The poor shabby furniture looked more than
ever dilapidated in the open daylight. The social air of a home that was
lived in, pervaded this temporary baggage-room between the tracks. One
child was asleep in a cradle, others were eating their coarse food off a
board. When a sprinkling of rain fell, an old grandmother under an
umbrella fastened to a bed-post went on knitting, serenely.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25