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Show 84 U. of U. Chronicle Year Book parlor Carpet Hazel Stevens-'07. HE JOHNSON'S little green and white cottage, on the outskirts of the village, looked very neat and prim, like a doll's house, in the softening light of the afternoon. In the back yard, a tiny patch of fresh garden "sass"-lettuce, and radishes, and onions,-was fenced with roughly whittled sticks ; around the kitchen door the ground had been carefully swept clean and bare; a half-dozen hens pecked idly about or cawed, disconsolately. It had been a hot, sultry day of late summer, oppressively hot; but now, as the sun began to sink, a fresher breath sprang up, bringing a waft of perfume from a yellow rose bush which straggled against one side of the house. Before the open kitchen window, Mrs. Johnson sat darning stockings. She was a small, wiry woman, with plaintive, childish features, and a face prematurely wrinkled. Today there was evidently something on her mind, for she pulled her needle through in quick jerks, puckering the darn; her thin lips kept quivering, and tears stood in the childish blue eyes, which she brushed away furtively; at intervals she glanced timidly at her daughter-who was shelling peas on the back stoop, as if she wanted to speak, and yet expected a rebuff. 'Liza was tall and round-shouldered, with ash-colored hair, parted and drawn tight back in a knot on her neck, red hands and arms, a reddish, freckly face, colorless eyelashes like her hair, and a half sullen, half dogged look in her eyes. They did not understand each other very well-the silent, awkward daughter and the little mother. They had lived here alone together for over ten years, and yet the mother seemed to find it impossible to say what was troubling her. A confidence was not a usual thing between them. For a while the only sounds were the creaking of the rocking chair, and the loud ticking of the kitchen clock; it was only when her, feelings became uncontrollable that Mrs. Johnson burst forth: "We do need a parlor carpet so bad, 'Liza! And here's your Aunt Matilda comin' next week: if she'd only waited, I'd 'a ' hed enough saved in a couple o' months." The stockings had slipped unheeded to the floor, and she clasped and unclasped her thin hands, going on, hurriedly: "Your Aunt Matilda has sech nice things-is jest seems- as how I can't stand to hev her see that carpet!" She glanced for sympathy to''Liza, who continued her shelling, apparently in stolid indifference, and did not answer. Yet she was striving dumbly to frame her sympathy, and to say something; she could not understand why a carpet could matter so much; she wondered vaguely about it, but was moved by her mother's feeling and by the unaccustomed confidence, to have an aching lump in her throat. "I don't s'pose you care!" said the mother, fretfully. |
