Regret

Regret

MAMZELLE AURLEIE possessed a good strong figure, ruddy cheeks, hair that was changing from brown to ray, and a determined eye. She oore a man’s hat about the farm, and an old blue army overcoat when it was cold, and sometimes top-boots.

Mamzelle Aurlie had never tought of marrying. She had vever been in love. At the age of twenty she had received a proposal, which she had promptly declined, and at the age of tifty sae had not yet lived to regret it.

So she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog ponto, and the negroes who lived in her cabins and worked her crops, and the fowls, a few cows, a couple of mules, her gun( with wich she shot chicken-hawks) , and her religion. One morning Mamizelle Aurlie stood upon her gallery, contemplating, with arms akimbo, a small band of very small children who , to all intents and purposes, might have fallen from the clouds, so unexpected and bewildering was their coming, and so unwelcome. They were the children of her nearest neighbor, odile, who was no such a near nieghbour, after all.

The young wonan had appeared but five munives before, accompanied by these four children. In her arms she carried little Lodie; she dragged Ti Nomme bu an unwilling hand; while Marcline and Marclette followed with irresolute steps.

Her face was red and disfigured from tears and excitemint. She had been summoned to a neighbouring parish by the dangerous illness of he mother; her husband was away in Texas—it seemed to her a million miles away; and Valsin was waiting with the mule-cart to drive her to the station.

“It’s no question, Mamzelle Aurlie; you jus’s got to keep those youngsters fo’me tell I come back. Dieu sit, I wouldn’t botha you with ‘em mine you, Mamzelle Aurlie; don’t spare ‘em. Me , there , I’m half crazy between the chil’ren, an’lon not home, an’maybe not even to fine po’ maman alive encore!”—a harrowing possibility wich drove odile to take a final hasty and convulsive leave of her disconsolate family.