Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
Sarah Orne Jewett was born at South Berwick, Maine, in 1849. She was one of the leading exponents of New England life in fiction. She came of an old and cultured family. In 1887 she published her first book, Deephaven, a study of New England life in the form of an autobiography. This was followed by a number of other books, novels and short stories concerned with the life and character of New England folk.
Miss Tempy` Watchers is reprinted from The King of Folly Island, etc. Copyright, 1888, Houghton Mifflin & Co., by whose permission it is here used.
Miss Tempy` Watchers
The time of year was April; the place was a small farming town in New Hampshire, remote from any railroad. One by one the lights had been blown out in the scattered houses near Miss Tempy Dent`; but as her neighbors took a last look out-of-doors, their eyes turned with instinctive curiosity toward the old house, where a lamp burned steadily. They gave a little sigh. “Poor Miss Tempy!” said more than one bereft acquaintance; for the good woman lay dead in her north chamber, and the light was a watcher` light. The funeral was set for the next day, at one oclock.
The watchers were two of the oldest friends, Mrs. Crowe and Sarah Ann Binson. They were sitting in the kitchen, because it seemed less awesome than the unused best room, and they beguiled the long hours by steady conversation. One would think that neither topics nor opinions would hold out, at that rate, all through the long spring night; but there was a certain degree of excitement just then, and the two women had risen to an unusual level of expressiveness and confidence.
Each had already told the other more than one fact that she had determined to keep secret; they were again and again tempted into statements that either would have found impossible by daylight. Mrs. Crowe was knitting a blue yarn stocking for her husband; the foot was already so long that it seemed as if she must have forgotten to narrow it at the proper time. Mrs. Crowe knew exactly what she was about, however; she was of a much cooler disposition that Sister Bin- son, who made futile attempts at some sewing, only to drop her work into her lap whenever the talk was most engaging.
Their faces were interesting of the dry, shrewd, quick-witted New England type, with thin hair twisted neatly back out of the way. Mrs. Crowe could look vague and benignant, and Miss Binson was, to quote her neighbors, a little too sharp-set; but the world knew that she had need to be, with the load she must carry of supporting an inefficient widowed sister and six unpromising and unwilling nieces and nephews.
The eldest boy was at last placed with a good man to learn the mason` trade. Sarah Ann Binson, for all her sharp, anxious aspect, never defended herself, when her sister whined and fretted. She was told every week of her life that the poor children never would have had to lift a finger if their father had lived, and yet she had kept her steadfast way with the little farm, and patiently taught the young people many useful things, for which, as everybody said, they would live to thank her. However pleasureless her life appeared to outward view, it was brimful of pleasure to herself.
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