 A Real New England Girl by Anna I. Parsons 1. The Shower 2. Oxford County 3. The Stranger and the Girl 4. The Youth and the Girl 5. Pansy and Richard Go Trading 6. The Marvelous Storyteller 7. The Dinner 8. The The Minister Comes for Tea 9. Pansy's Father 10. Pansy and Her Mother 11. Poland Springs 12. The Birthday Cake 13. Ned Patterson Comes for a Visit 14. The Blue Berrying Party 15. The Beginning of Wisdom 16. The Tempted and the Penitent 17. The Concert 18. Stanley's Ride 19. The Bench by the Wayside 20. The Banker and the Widow 21. The Bag of Nuts 22. How They Kept Thanksgiving at Little Farm 23. Hardly a Merry Christimas 24. A Call Down and a Caller 25. The Pride of Mrs. Bradford 26. A Happy New Year 27. Amusement and Winter Sport 28. Kim 29. Richard, the Lion Hearted 30. A Tour of the White Mountains 31. Talking Over the Trip with Henry Bright 32. Thoughts That Lie Too Deep for Words 33. Economics 34. His Toast 35. The Busy Haunts of Man 36. Christmas in New York 37. The Last Night of Their Visit 38. The Language Understood by All 39. Sugaring Off 40. Correspondence 41. Commencement 42. Conclusion Afterward     |
Kim "Even a wise man may become attached to a dog when he is well brought up." -- Goethe The second summer Stanley came to Paris, he brought with him a dog, a brindled-pied English Bull with the short, broad muzzle inclined upward, flat forehead, thick neck, wrinkled skin, powerful shoulders and sour expression characteristic of this specie. When he attempted to introduce him to Pansy at the half-way tree, she burst into such merry laughter that it seemed to disconcert even the brute. "She's only making fun of you, Kim," said Stanley, soothingly, "because you have the handsomest mouth in dogdum. Come here and shake hands with Richard!" The dog obeyed, and then climbed upon the bench and sat down beside Richard, as if sure he had found in him a friend. "You are so homely, I'm sorry for you," said Pansy, standing with hands clasped behind her as she bent slightly forward and looked straight into the wideset, dark eyes of the dog. "Tell her you forgive her, because she doesn't know you as yet," said Stanley. The dog growled. Again there came a burst of merriment. "Your voice is even worse than your face, and one would have to resort to hyperbole to describe that; for example, if all the other homely faces were combined into one homely face, they could not altogether make such a homely face as your homely face." "Sorry we don't please with our looks and voice, but we hope to please with our manners, Mistress Pansy, if you will be a little patient." (Stanley was speaking, not the dog). "May he be scant of his canine presence until pleasing time arrives." "Do you hear that, Kim? She wants you to be scant of your canine presence until pleasing time arrives. You go down and wait by the first elm tree until I call you." To Pansy's astonishment, the dog jumped off the bench and walked slowly down the road toward the Winthrop house. "Who'd ever think such an ugly creature would understand what you say to him?" "Pansy," said Stanley, making room for her on the bench, "that dog is of pedigree stock and is being given a college education. He already understands French, German, Italian, and can almost read Greek, and I want you to like him very much." "I'll try," said Pansy, so mischievously, that he felt it was going to be a hopeless task to reconcile the dog and girl. "Now, tell me how you and Trifles are getting along," he said, settling back into a corner of the bench. "Oh, there's a sort of truce between us," answered Pansy, smiling half sadly. "He's being very polite to me, and I'm wondering, like the colored man who accidentally stumbled across another man who had hung himself, what on earth will he do next?" Stanley lifted his eyebrows slightly. "With another year of his tutelage, you will be quite accomplished in uncertainties." Pansy's face became serious. "Yes, I'll be quite accomplished in uncertainties," she replied, but the words were no sooner out of her mouth than she regretted them, and tried to obliterate by a quick return to the jocular. "I suppose it's wise to be always on the alert, for you can never tell when your most respected friend will come along with a beast so hideous that you'd die of fright if you met him when alone." "If you feel that way about Kim, I'll ship him back to New York tomorrow." "I guess you'd better not," she said, with a saucy twist of the head. "Richard is sort of taken with him, and you seem to have him so well hypnotized it is entirely safe to have him about." All unconscious that he had so nearly been the cause of a quarrel, Kim waited by the elm tree until his master's whistle sounded a release, and then trotted up the gradient with more alacrity than he had gone down. It was warm and sunny in those spacious grounds, and he just doted on sunshine and warmth of every kind, but most of all the warmth of his master's attachment for him which he returned in kind and with full measure, pressed down and running over. It has been said of the Bulldog, that it transfers its affections more readily than any other specie of dog, but if faithful, none can exceed it. Kim was faithful. From puppyhood he had been taught to obey and to observe those niceties of manner that mark the perfectly trained animal. Though he possessed many of the characteristics that had won for this specie its name in the ancient days of bull-baiting, he differed radically from his ancestors, in that he could love with as much fever as they could fight, and history says they fought with a ferocity and courage that seemed insensible to pain. Aside from being faithful, Kim could do almost everything except talk, but even with the power of speech wanting, he possessed an attraction which but few men failed to feel and to express upon seeing him. The muscular strength of his jaw, perhaps more than intelligence, accounted for this attitude of friendship, for human nature is inclined to respect that which respects and protects itself. When but a short time in the country, Stanley had trained him to serve as mail carrier between the Winthrop house and Little Farm. Even with her aversion to dogs, Pansy could not repress a smile when Kim came trotting into the yard with an air of importance, and would scratch on the door until she had opened it and taken from the little pouch attached to his collar the letter he had been sent to deliver. If an answer was to be given, he waited patiently outside the door until it was deposited in the pouch, and then was off home as fast and faithfully as any carrier attached to the service of his Honor, the President of the United States. To Stanley, this second summer was more full of interest than the first had been. His fund of knowledge had been increased by a year's study at college, and life itself at a great university is crowded with incidents from which one may constantly draw for entertainment while resting in the hills during the warm summer days. He liked to tell the stories of college life to Pansy and Richard and hear their comments and watch their faces glow with interest as the tale unfolded. They had also been making strides during the year in knowledge and physical development, and though they were not much larger or much older looking, they were buds that cultivation was gently filling out for splendid adornment to the bow on which they clung. Stanley was wholly unconscious of how great a factor he had been in their mental development -- in broadening their sympathies, in enlarging their point of view, and helping them to form opinions without prejudice. Their limited experience had made them sharply critical of those who had received a different training, and Stanley's "No, I would not say that," or "I do not agree with you," had in some instances set them thinking, and when they did any serious thinking, it was usually to their benefit. The sunset hour nearly always found the three together, sometimes in lively debate, sometimes just telling stories, or playing tennis if the weather was not too warm for vigorous exercise. One evening the conversation turned on politics, and when Stanley expressed sentiment strongly favoring the principles of the Democratic party, it almost made them ill. For two or three days thereafter, he felt that they avoided him, and they absolutely refused to talk with him again on the subject. Once when he had Richard alone, he asked for an explanation, and Richard had answered, "John Swift is a Democrat, and we don't like to think of you as in the same class." The cat was out of the bag at last; neither a belief in tariff or low or high degree had caused the blot on his escutcheon, but a shiftless farmer claiming to be of the same political persuasion as himself. He did not much wonder, in this instance, at their bias. The latter part of July, the Winthrops planned to make an extensive tour of the White Mountains by automobile, and Stanley was anxious that Pansy and Richard accompany them, but Mr. Alden needed Richard's assistance so much that he felt he could not spare him, and as Pansy refused to go without Richard, there seemed little prospect of their participating in the trip when fate stepped in and opened the way, but not without a preface of anxious hours to the Bradfords who lived so much in accord with the Golden Rule, that its flagrant breach by others was almost as shocking as though old Streaked Mountain had opened its rock-ribbed sides and become a second Vesuvius. Click Here for Chapter 29 |