Categories
- Antiques & Collectibles 13
- Architecture 36
- Art 47
- Bibles 22
- Biography & Autobiography 811
- Body, Mind & Spirit 110
- Business & Economics 26
- Computers 4
- Cooking 94
- Crafts & Hobbies 3
- Drama 346
- Education 45
- Family & Relationships 50
- Fiction 11812
- Games 19
- Gardening 17
- Health & Fitness 34
- History 1377
- House & Home 1
- Humor 147
- Juvenile Fiction 1873
- Juvenile Nonfiction 202
- Language Arts & Disciplines 88
- Law 16
- Literary Collections 686
- Literary Criticism 179
- Mathematics 13
- Medical 41
- Music 39
- Nature 179
- Non-Classifiable 1768
- Performing Arts 7
- Periodicals 1453
- Philosophy 62
- Photography 2
- Poetry 896
- Political Science 203
- Psychology 42
- Reference 154
- Religion 488
- Science 126
- Self-Help 61
- Social Science 80
- Sports & Recreation 34
- Study Aids 3
- Technology & Engineering 59
- Transportation 23
- Travel 463
- True Crime 29
Green Fancy
Description:
Excerpt
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST WAYFARER AND THE SECOND WAYFARER MEET AND PART ON THE HIGHWAY
A solitary figure trudged along the narrow road that wound its serpentinous way through the dismal, forbidding depths of the forest: a man who, though weary and footsore, lagged not in his swift, resolute advance. Night was coming on, and with it the no uncertain prospects of storm. Through the foliage that overhung the wretched road, his ever-lifting and apprehensive eye caught sight of the thunder-black, low-lying clouds that swept over the mountain and bore down upon the green, whistling tops of the trees. At a cross-road below he had encountered a small girl driving homeward the cows. She was afraid of the big, strange man with the bundle on his back and the stout walking stick in his hand: to her a remarkable creature who wore "knee pants" and stockings like a boy on Sunday, and hob-nail shoes, and a funny coat with "pleats" and a belt, and a green hat with a feather sticking up from the band. His agreeable voice and his amiable smile had no charm for her. He merely wanted to know how far it was to the nearest village, but she stared in alarm and edged away as if preparing to break into mad flight the instant she was safely past him with a clear way ahead.
"Don't be afraid," he said gently. "And here! Catch it if you can." He tossed a coin across the road. It struck at her feet and rolled into the high grass. She did not divert her gaze for the fraction of a second. "I'm a stranger up here and I want to find some place to sleep for the night. Surely you have a tongue, haven't you?" By dint of persuasive smiles and smirks that would have sickened him at any other time he finally induced her to say that if he kept right on until he came to the turnpike he would find a sign-post telling him where to get gasolene.
"But I don't want gasolene. I want bread and butter," he said.
"Well, you can git bread an' butter there too," she said. "Food fer man an' beast, it says."
"A hotel?"
"Whut?"
"A boarding-house?" he substituted.
"It's a shindy," she said, painfully. "Men get drunk there. Pap calls it a tavern, but Ma says it's a shindy."
"A road-house, eh?" She was puzzled—and silent. "Thank you. You'll find the quarter in the grass. Good-bye."
He lifted his queer green hat and strode away, too much of a gentleman to embarrass her by looking back. If he had done so he would have seen her grubbing stealthily in the grass, not with her brown little hands, but with the wriggling toes of a bare foot on which the mud, perhaps of yesterday, had caked. She was too proud to stoop.
At last he came to the "pike" and there, sure enough, was the sign- post. A huge, crudely painted hand pointed to the left, and on what was intended to be the sleeve of a very stiff and unflinching arm these words were printed in scaly white: "Hart's Tavern. Food for Man and Beast. Also Gasolene. Established 1798. 1 mile." "Also Gasolene" was freshly painted and crowded its elders in a most disrespectful manner....