The Purple Heights

the same discovering something about others quite as fascinating and worth exploring. This is a

e angels of the Little Peoples turned his boyish head aside and made him see birds' wings, and bees, and the shapes of leaves, and the colors of trees and clouds, and the faces

fore his mind's eye whatever he had seen, with every distinction of shape and size and color sharply present, and accurately to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, "What's the shape of the milkweed butterfly's wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champn

fought, and if a man buys old iron at such a price, and makes it over into stoves weighing so much, and sells his stoves at such another price, what does it profit him, and other such-like illuminating and uplifting problems, warranted to make any school-child

ration, and a serenity that sat oddly on his slight shoulders. Thoughts came t

ted by him with owl-like wings. Mocking-birds broke into silvery, irrepressible singing, and water-birds croaked and rustled in the cove, where the tide-water lipped the land. The slim, black pine-trees nodded and bent to one another, with the moon looking over their shoulders. Something wild and sweet and secret invaded the little b

ed; it meant that he wouldn't be very unhappy in school; or maybe he'd find a thrush's nest, or the pink orchid. Or the meeting might simply imply something nice and homey, such as a little treat his mothe

o use his fingers, as he had been learning to use his eyes and ears. He was morbidly shy about it. It never oc

in water-colors. By herculean efforts he had managed to get his materials; he had picked berries, weeded gardens until h

raphy. There was the gray worm-fence, a bit of brown ditch, an elder in flower, a tall purple thistle, and on it the Red Ad

r mother's burthday

s the 11th Yea

wonder, and pride, and drew his head to her breast and kissed his hair and eyes, an

nd I'm not bright at all, except maybe about sewing. But you are different. I've always felt that, Peter, from the time you were a little baby. At the age of five months you cut two teeth without crying once! You were a wo

like stinging gnats. So he wasn't made vainglorious by his mother's praise. He received it with cautious reservations. But her faith in him filled him with an immense tenderness for the little woman, and a passionate desire, a very agony of desire, to struggle toward her

see what our dear child can do!" she told the smiling crayon portrait. "Some of these days the litt

es rolled down Peter's. His heart swelled, and again he felt in his breast the flutter as of wings

n the least intellectual; she hadn't even the gift of humor, or she wouldn't have thought herself a sinner and besought Heaven to forgive sins she never committed. She used to weep over the Fifty-first Psalm, take courage from the Thirty-seventh, and when she hadn't enough food for her body feed her spirit on the Twenty-third. She didn't know that it is women like her who manage to make and

her." But of a sudden, the winter that Peter was turning twelve, the tide of battle went against her. The needle-pricked, patient fingers dropped their work. She said apologetically, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm too s

for her. Toward dusk the neighbor who had watched

better in t

r a while Emma Campbell, who had been looking after the house, went

e windows impatiently. On the closed sewing-machine an oil lamp burned, turned rather low. Peter sat in a rocking-chair drawn close to his mother's bedside and

e turned toward the bed again she was wide awake and looking at him intently. Peter ran to her, kiss

r." There was no fear in her. The child looked at her p

ild. You couldn't be dishonorable, or a coward, or a liar, or unkind, to save your life. You will always be gentle, a

the night, to spare her the agony of witnessing his agony, was almost intuitive with him. He braced himself, and kept his self-control. She seemed to u

and you yet, my dearest. Your sort of brightness is different from theirs-and better, bec

two looked at each other,

od's sake, for my sake, for all the Champneyses' sake, take it, Peter, take it!" H

prove that I was right about you. Remember how all my years, Peter, I toiled and prayed-all for

I won't fail you!" cried Pete

d love contented. That smile on a dying mouth stayed, with other beautiful and im

for somebo

u afrai

said

You-you are all I have-I don't need anybody

The dark night was filled with a multitudinous murmuring. For a long while Peter and his mother clung to ea

nd he couldn't warm. Her face was sharp and pale and pinched. She looked ver

illed with shifting shadows. Maria Champneys turned her head on her pillow, and stared at her son wi

invisible hand her head began to bend forward. A thin, gray shade, as of inconceivably fine ashes, settled upon her

art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'" P

her's lips. Her eyes closed, the hand in Peter's fell limp and slack. T

in the dawn of a winter morning, when the tide was turning