Read Online Miss Fuller by April Bernard - Free Book Online

think of you when I hear the bell. The Dial paid the toll .”
    It was a hard thing to need money, to have to ask for it. It might also be a hard thing to give it; but Mr. E and Greeley and the others had not, in this case, done that particular hard thing.
    The light was low and the shadows long when they arrived at the back door of the Emersons’ house. Henry did not go inside, and he took his old friend’s hand in his.
    “It was right that she should come home,” said Henry. “It’s contrary for any American to live in Europe. She needed to come home.” He meant those words; he was not lying. But he held some other words back.
    Mr. E rubbed again at his face, making the skin ruddy and disarranging his side-whiskers, and heavily climbed the back steps. Henry found that he was not able to tell him about what he had discovered on Fire Island. Emerson was a man with money to give or not to give. He and Margaret were mice who darted for crumbs.

    The family finished the move into the new house. Two horses and a sledge were hired to drag the last heavy pieces: Henry’s work-table, Mother’s stove, the storage bins, and the wardrobes. Henry was to have the attic to himself,but neither of its doors was large enough for his enormous ancient table. He had to saw off the legs first and then, with two other men helping, he and Father carried up the top. He then installed some hardware screws in the legs, and Anne helped him twist the legs back into the augered holes he had made in the top. He fretted the entire time about the danger of the wood top splitting, as it was very old cherry — and his sister as always was patient. She swept up the shavings into her hand as he re-drilled one of the holes. He did not look up from his work when he told her he had something to show her from his trip.
    The table was up, the wood had not cracked, the legs were steady. They pushed it into place under the west window. Then Henry hoisted the crate onto the table and pried off the top slats as Anne collected into a tidy pile the confetti of straw that fluttered out. She held up a piece with drooping seeds that bobbed like a feather.
    “It’s called sand-oats,” said Henry. “It covers the dunes.”
    First came out the present of the new box of paints, not only small blocks of water-colors, but plump packets of powder for mixing with oil as well, including a new white called “Clear White,” Indian Yellow, and Persian Green.
    “Lovely! Oh, Henny!”
    “You said you wanted to learn oil techniques — here’s a little book about mixing the oils and making the palette, and painting on proper canvases. I can stretch some for you on frames if you like.”
    Then some shells, several of the skate’s egg-sacs he had promised — they looked like enormous black beetles with horns on both ends — and drift-wood, sea-polished stones, sea-gull feathers, and smelly pieces of kelp came out of the crate. There was still something large under the straw, which Henry now gently swept off with his hand. He pulled the large box out.
    It was a lap-desk, made of pine or some other deal-wood, with blonde fruit-wood veneer badly damaged. A green square of tooled leather, held down by dimpled bronze carpet tacks, had cracked and peeled away in strips from the slant top; the bronze latch was loose because, Henry explained, a picker had pried it open with a knife. As Anne looked over his shoulder, he lifted the lid: inside was a spilt-out bottle of brownish ink and a huge stain, like dried blood, that covered the bottom of the desk box. A pen with its nib missing, the cork to the ink bottle, some blotting scraps, a button, a litter of sand and shells, and several drawing-pins rattled about. And there was a well-stained pile of manuscript pages, covered in large writing.
    Carefully, she reached in and picked up the pages — the bottom sheaf stuck to the wood, and as she pulled it up, it tore slightly and left a smudged shadow of paper. It seemed that all