Gowdy says he thinks
he may be able to get her property for her soon. She can hardly be
expected to come out for this."
And grandma swept her hands about to cast down into nothingness my
house, my affairs, and me. This plunged me into the depths of misery.
So, when I furnished the cream for the donation picnic at Crabapple
Grove in strawberry time, I went prepared to see myself discarded by my
love. She was there, and I had not overestimated her coldness toward
me. Buck Gowdy came for only a few minutes, and these he spent eating
ice-cream with Elder Thorndyke, with Virginia across the table from him,
looking at her in that old way of his. Before he left, she went over and
sat with Bob Wade and Kittie Fleming; but he joined them pretty soon,
and I saw him bending down in that intimate way of his, first speaking
to Kittie, and then for a longer time, to Virginia--and I thought of the
time when she would not even speak his name!
Once she walked off by herself in the trees, and looked back at me as
she went; but I was done with her, I said to myself, and hung back. She
soon returned to the company, and began flirting with Matthias Trickey,
who was no older than I, and just as much of a country bumpkin. I found
out afterward that right off after that, Matthias began going to see
her, with his pockets full of candy with mottoes on it. I called this
sparking, and the sun of my hopes set in a black bank of clouds. I do
not remember that I was ever so unhappy, not even when John Rucker was
in power over me and my mother, not even when I was seeking my mother up
and down the canal and the Lakes, not even when I found that she had
gone away on her last long journey that bleak winter day in Madison.
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