7 best short stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, August Nemo

• Publisher: Tacet Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9783967997767
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women Authors Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Through her different genres of work including children's stories, poems, and short stories, Mary Wilkins Freeman sought to demonstrate her values as a feminist. During the time which she was writing, she did this in nonconventional ways; for example, she diverged from making her female characters weak and in need of help which was a common trope in literature.Come and enjoy the seven selected short stories of this author.A New England NunAnn Mary; Her Two Thanksgivings Luella Miller Little-Girl-Afraid-of-a-Dog Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas The Gospel According To JoanThe Revolt of "Mother"

The Gospel According To Joan

“My!”

“Don't you think I've done pretty well?”

“Sarah Bannister, you know as well as I do, it is wonderful!”

The two women stood in the best parlor, a long room, furnished with aggressive plush and mahogany, and onyx tables, and a marble Clytie drooping her head impudently in her out-of-place state in a New England parlor. The room was chilly in spite of the radiators, glaring with gilt in the most conspicuous wall spaces. Every piece of furniture — old-fashioned square tables, chairs, and piano — was covered with dainty things, large and small, of all colors and fabrics.

“To think you made everything here with your own hands!” commented Miss Lottie Dodd. She was a distant relative of Mrs. Bannister's, who lived with her a month at a time.

“Yes, and the worst of it is, it isn't quite a week to Christmas, and I haven't got the things done yet.”

“Land! I should think you had enough here for the whole town.”

“I'm giving to about the whole town this year. Then, you know all our cousins out West, and the raft of relations we never see except at our funerals, that live in Watchboro, and Center Watchboro, and South and North and East.”

“I didn't know you remembered them Christmas.”

“I don't every year, but this time I was so forehanded I thought I'd put

them in with the rest.”

“You don't mean to say you are remembering all the Rice family?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Not all those children?”

“Oh, I've got the children's presents all ready; it's the older folks' I haven't got done. I have planned a lot of drawnwork.”

“You do that so beautifully,” said Lottie. She was a tiny woman snugged in a lavender wool shawl. The tip of her sharp nose was red. Her blue eyes were tearful, from cold and enthusiasm. Lottie was prey to enthusiasms, even petty ones.

“I've got a lot more to do. I sha'n't try any different patterns from these here; the same with the knitted lace. That will make it easier.”

Sarah Bannister clipped the last word short with a sneeze.

“Sarah, you are catching cold in this room.”

“Don't know but I am. It never will heat when the wind's northwest. It's bitter outdoors today, too. The snow hasn't melted one mite. Look at those windows all frosted up.”

“Well, Sarah, we better be going back to the sitting room, where it's warm.”

“Guess we'd better. I was going to look a little longer. I don't seem to see some things I know I've got. I do feel some as if I were catching cold. Hope to goodness I don't — just before Christmas, too. I'll get Henry to bring in some wood for the sitting-room hearth fire.”

“I sort of wonder sometimes why you and Henry don't keep a man to fetch and carry,” said Lottie Dodd, as the two entered the sitting room, meeting a gust of warm air, scented with geranium and heliotrope from the window plants. “Henry is quite some older than you, and it's beginning to show.”

“Oh, Henry's perfectly able to do what little chores we have. Men want some exercise.”

They sat down. Sarah Bannister began to crochet, a neatly rolled-up ball of finished lace bobbing as her fingers moved. Lottie worked laboriously on a blue centerpiece.

“It certainly is lucky you are so well off, Sarah.”

“Yes, I realize it is. Henry never saved much, but I have enough for both, thanks to poor father. I never spend a cent but I think of him. He used to talk so much to me about not being extravagant.”

“Oh, Sarah, as if anybody could accuse you of that!”

Sarah started, but she continued talking. “Poor father used to say — I remember as if it were yesterday — ‘Sarah, it's easy enough to get money, for those who have the right kind of heads, and work, but it takes more than heads to keep it. That's a gift.’”

Lottie Dodd, impecunious, who had never benefited much from Sarah's riches, except in the somewhat negative way of food and cast-off clothing, looked reflectively at the large, flat, rather handsome face.

Sarah stared sharply at Lottie, who did not speak. Silence and immobility make a fool inscrutable.

Sarah suspected. “Now, you wouldn't believe, Lottie Dodd, how little some of these things in there” — she shrugged her shoulders toward the parlor — “cost.”

“You don't mean it.” Lottie's voice was as blatantly innocent as a lamb's.

“Yes, I bought a lot at the five-and-ten-cent stores, and I had nice pieces of silk and satin and lace, and I mixed them in, and you'd never know. I thought of poor father every minute I was in these five-and-ten-cent stores.”

“They would have just suited your dear pa.”

Again the look of suspicion was in Sarah's eyes, to disappear before the other woman's innocent expression. Then the doorbell rang with a loud clang.

“Sakes alive! Whoever can that be, such a cold afternoon?” said Mrs. Bannister.

“Maybe it's a peddler.”

“Well, if it is, he vamooses. I never will allow a peddler in my house.” Sarah Bannister sneezed three times.

“Let me go to the door,” said Lottie Dodd. “You have caught cold, sure as fate. Let me go, dear.”

In Lottie's voice was the faint, very faint inflection in which she betrayed her consciousness that she was a year and a half younger than Sarah. To Lottie that meant, when she so desired, the feebleness of age for Sarah, juvenile agility for herself.

Sarah recognized that inflection. “I rather guess I'm as able to go to the door as you,” she retorted. She thrust her face almost into the other's in a way she had when irritated.

“It was only on account of your cold, dear,” protested Lottie, shrinking back.

“I haven't got any cold. If you're trying to wish one on me, you can just stop. Sneezing don't prove you've got a cold. Hm!”

“Why, Sarah!”

Sarah stepped majestically doorward as the bell rang again. She walked on her heels as she had a trick of doing when feeling unusually self-sufficient. Lottie peeked around the curtain over the pots of geraniums, but she could see nothing. She could hear voices, and the wind came in the cracks of the sitting-room door. The front door closed with a bang, and Lottie darted back to her chair. She expected to see Mrs. Bannister enter irate after turning away a peddler, but after Sarah entered a young girl, hardly more than a child.

“Go right to that hearth fire and sit down and get warm through,” ordered Mrs. Bannister. She spoke in a stern voice, but her speech ended in a beautiful cadence. When the child was seated before the fire, which Sarah stirred to a higher blaze and piled with more wood, she gazed at the young face reflecting the red glow, and smiled in a way that made Lottie gaze wonderingly at her, and suddenly remember that years ago, so many years that she had forgotten, Sarah Bannister had lost a daughter about the age of this girl. Meantime Sarah Bannister was removing the girl's extraordinarily shabby hat, and pulling off gently her shabbier coat. The girl resisted the last a little, and her small timid voice murmured something about her dress.

“Never mind your dress,” said Sarah. “You will get warmer with these off.”

As she spoke she laid the coat and hat on a chair, rather gingerly. Such rags as the coat disclosed, such rags of a red silk lining, and such a sinfully draggled feather decked the old hat. Sarah turned to look at the girl. Lottie was looking. Lottie had her mouth slightly open. Sarah gasped. The girl sitting there, meekly, almost limply, was a darling of a girl (judging from her little face). It was very pale now, but with the velvety pallor of a white flower. Her hair lay in soft rings of gold shading into brown about her small head. She wore her hair short, and it made her seem more a child. Her dress was torn about the sleeves and gaped where hooks were missing, unless pinned with obvious pins. Her little hands were stiff and red, and one continued to clasp cautiously the handle of an unspeakably shabby old bag. Suddenly she looked up, first at one, then at the other of the faces regarding her. She looked with perfect composure, so perfect that it directly made her seem older. Her great blue eyes had a womanly wise cognizance of the two women.

“How old are you?” demanded Sarah Bannister, suddenly.

“Thirteen last May,” replied the girl. Her voice was charming, with a curious appeal in it. She seemed to be begging pardon for the fact that she was thirteen last May.

Sarah Bannister, her face working as if she were about to weep, went to a little china closet, and presently came back with a glass of homemade wine, and a square of sponge cake on a pink plate.

“Here, drink this and eat this cake,” said she. “It will do you good.”

She set a small table beside the girl and placed the wine glass and the cake on it.

“Thank you, ma'am,” said the girl. She began to eat and drink rather eagerly. She was evidently famished, but very gentle about it. She still retained her hold of the bag.

Lottie spoke for the first time. “What have you got in that bag?” said she, rather sharply. The girl flashed her blue eyes at her in a frightened but defiant way.

“Things to sell,” she whispered.

Lottie looked at Sarah. So she was a peddler, after all. Sarah did not return Lottie's glance. She spoke to the girl.

“When you have finished your cake and wine, and get real warm, I will look at the things you have to sell,” said she, softly.

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Lottie began to be aggressive. “What is your name?” she asked, peremptorily.

“Don't speak so sharp, Lottie,” said Sarah. “You will scare her half to death. She's nothing but a child. She was half frozen. She was standing there on the doorstep, shaking from head to foot, poor little thing, half dressed, too, on such a day as this.” Sarah glanced at the heap of wool and red silk rags on the chair, and remembered a nice thick wool coat in the closet of a certain chamber.

Lottie asked again, but more gently, “What is your name, little girl?”

“Joan Brooks.”

“Oh, I know her,” said Lottie, with an accent of slight scorn. “Her father's that broken-down minister. He fills the pulpit sometimes when Mr. Whitman has bronchitis.”

“He preaches very well, too,” said Sarah, kindly.

“Father is not broken-down. He stands up as well as you do,” said Joan, unexpectedly. Then she began to rise. “Where is my coat?” said she.

“You sit right down, child,” said Sarah. “She didn't mean a thing. Of course your father isn't broken-down. We always speak that way of a minister who don't preach regularly.”

“Father used to preach regularly,” said the girl, eagerly, “b...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• The Author
• A New England Nun
• Ann Mary; Her Two Thanksgivings
• Luella Miller
• Little-Girl-Afraid-of-a-Dog
• Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas
• The Gospel According To Joan
• The Revolt of "Mother"
• About the Publisher
• Colophon