[Phpwiki-bugs] nk at f

[Alcazar <cer...@he...>]

Se on the edge of the illimitable cornfields, under trees pushed to a
top of the rolling prairie. George's father had settled there after the
Civil War, as so many other old soldiers had done; but they were Eastern
people, and Editha fancied touches of the East in the June rose
overhanging the front door, and the garden with early summer flowers
stretching from the gate of the paling fence. It was very low inside the
house, and so dim, with the closed blinds, that they could scarcely see
one another: Editha tall and black in her crapes which filled the air
with the smell of their dyes; her father standing decorously apart with
his hat on his forearm, as at funerals; a woman rested in a deep
arm-chair, and the woman who had let the strangers in stood behind the
chair. The seated woman turned her head round and up, and asked the
woman behind her chair: "_Who_ did you say?" Editha, if she had done
what she expected of herself, would have gone down on her knees at the
feet of the seated figure and said, "I am George's Editha," for answer.
But instead of her own voice she heard that other woman's voice, saying:
"Well, I don't know as I _did_ get the name just right. I guess I'll
have to make a little more light in here," and she went and pushed two
of the shutters ajar. Then Editha's father said, in his public
will-now-address-a-few-remarks tone: "My name is Balcom, ma'am--Junius
H. Balcom, of Balcom's Works, New York; my daughter--" "Oh!" the seated
woman broke in, with a powerful voice, the voice that always surprised
Editha from Gearson's slender frame. "Let me see you. Stand round where
the light can strike on your face," and Editha dumbly obeyed. "So,
you're Editha Balcom," she sighed. "Yes," Editha said, more like a
culprit than a comforter. "What did you come for?" Mrs. Gearson asked.
Editha's face quivered and her knees shook. "I came--because--because
George--" She could go no further. "Yes," the mother said, "he told me
he had asked you to come if