He began to dream of youth and his bridal day, murmuring bits of
recollection aloud. But the old wife sat very silent, for it was not her
wedding day she was thinking about, but her little first-born son, who
had lived a year,—just one year. She brought him here once, when her
tired old eyes had been young and eager and laughter-lighted, and had
sat with him on the grass under the tree, and he had rolled over in it
and laughed, and clutched at the violets with his little dimpled hands.
He had been dead for forty years, but he was still unforgotten. She
always felt that he was very near her here by the old tree—nearer than
anywhere else, by reason of that one day they had played together under
it. When she went away she had an odd little idea which she would not
have uttered for the world—of which she was even a little ashamed,
thinking it foolish and perhaps wicked,—that she left him there,
playing with the gypsies of the night—the little wandering, whispering,
tricksy winds, the moths, the beetles, the shadows—in his eternal youth
under the white, enfolding arms of Miser Tom’s old apple tree.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.
[The end of _The Bloom of May_ by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery]
Reader notes
Loading reader notes…