Corral Nocturne Read Online Free PDF Page B

But in the next second the light in her face
faltered a little, checking the words of ready acceptance that had
nearly been on her lips.
    “I’d like to go—if I can,” she said
cautiously, hoping that Cole could see how much she really did want
it, in spite of her hesitation. Conflicting feelings made her speak
carefully and deliberately. “I’d very much like to, but I’ll have
to see…May I tell you in a day or two, when I know?”
    She had fancied she saw a slight trace of
disappointment in Cole’s face at her apparent lack of enthusiasm.
But whether imagined or not, it was gone quickly, replaced by his
ready smile. “Of course. How about Sunday afternoon? I’ll come by
for a drive then, and you can tell me if you’ve made up your
mind.”
    “All right,” said Ellie, whose mind would
have been made up in that instant had it not been for that one cold
little doubt that had caught at her. She managed to smile up at him
in her usual way. “I’ll know by then. Good night!”
    “Good night, Ellie.”
    She stood by the gatepost, in nearly the same
place she had stood on that first morning when he asked her to the
picnic, and watched him pull down into the yard and turn the buggy.
As he came back past her Cole lifted the hand that held the buggy
whip in farewell, and Ellie waved her hand to him, feeling
suddenly, inexplicably, very small and far away. The rattle of the
buggy dying away down the road as it grew smaller in the distance
completed the impression, leaving her standing alone in the soft
hush of the prairie evening, with only the faint cry of a
night-bird for company.
    She walked across the yard to the house. She
looked meditatively down at the skirt of her blue gingham dress,
and watched it swing and brush the tops of her shoes as she walked.
Ellie bit her lip and looked up again at the house as she
approached it; the light of a lamp shone from a front window. There
was a spot of light from a lantern over near the barn, indicating
that Ed was out doing the evening chores; her mother would be
alone.
    Ellie went up the two steps to the door and
pushed it open. She went in, turned around and closed the door, and
then she looked at her mother. Mrs. Strickland was sitting by the
table, sorting socks for darning. She glanced up without her thin,
work-hardened hands stopping in their task. “Did you have a good
time?” she said.
    “Yes,” said Ellie a little absently. She laid
down her hat and the light shawl she had carried. Mrs. Strickland
gave her another glance, a slightly more observant one.
    “Something on your mind?” she said.
    “Well, a little,” said Ellie. She put her
folded arms across the top of a high-backed wooden chair. “Cole
asked me to go to the Fourth of July dance with him.”
    “Oh, yes?” said Mrs. Strickland, displaying
some interest. “Do you want to go?”
    “I’m not sure,” said Ellie. “But I don’t mean
that. That’s what I want to talk to you about, Mama. I’d just love
to go. I haven’t been to town on the Fourth for four years! And I
wasn’t old enough to dance then. It isn’t that, it’s just—” She
glanced down at her folded arms clad in the blue gingham. “I don’t
know if my best dress is nice enough to wear. Oh, it’s been
perfectly nice enough for all the other things I’ve gone to. But
you know what the girls wear to a big dance like this—lawn and
organdie, and those pretty white embroidered dresses—it’s a little
different.” Her clear young gray eyes sought her mother’s face
earnestly. “I don’t mind looking a bit plainer than everyone else,
really, Mama. But do you think it would look too—silly? I mean
would it be right? For a big dance like this?”
    Mrs. Strickland looked at her for a minute.
Her forehead knit thoughtfully as her eyes traveled up and down the
figure of her daughter standing there by the chair, taking in the
plain blue gingham, the serious, questioning face, and the soft
light of the lamp on the girl’s