Read Online Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh - Free Book Online

more about that.
    “Well then, I won’t mention it again,” I said. “I was just worried about you the other day, and I thought maybe I should have a name or an address of someone to contact
    if you should become ill.”
    “I am no longer a young man, Miss Anne,” he said. “But I am in good health, and I am very happy here with things just the way they are. What I thought I saw the other day was perhaps just something I remembered from an old story my father once told to me.”
    “I’d like to hear it,” I ventured, and he glanced at me, perhaps to see if I was sincere or merely being polite. Convinced of my sincerity, he began the story, and right away, I could sense the magical quality of it.
    “On a faraway island called Hokkaido, there are great cranes that are found nowhere else in all the world,” he began, warming to his story right away so that he spoke with more animation than I had ever seen before. “The story is about a lonely woodcutter who rescued a great crane that was hurt. And he nursed it back to health.”
    Here, he paused and looked at me again, and he had the strangest smile on him, as if it didn’t quite know how to fit into his face.
    “And the crane turned into a lovely bride for the woodcutter, through magic.” His words were almost breathless. And then he added, “It’s only an old story.”
    “It’s lovely,” I said, quite truthfully.
    “Well, I thought I saw a great crane in your garden that day.”
    “One that turned into a young woman?” I asked cautiously.
    “No.” Again, he smiled, and his cheeks quivered, as if they were surprised by it. “Just a great crane.”
    “It was a blue heron perhaps?” I offered. “Or a whooping crane, of course? That sometimes happens.”
    “Perhaps,” he said, once again wearing that very strange but lovely smile. Then he pushed back his chair, stood up, and bowed deeply to me. “And now, I thank you for the delicious tea.”
    Well, after that, I’ll have to admit that I thought of us as friends a little. Because I’d invited him to take tea at my own table. And because he had told me that lovely story from his own childhood.
    So the next morning—which was Sunday—I awakened early, thinking most distinctly that I really should give Mr. Oto more say-so about how the garden would be planted. Goodness knows, he never said anything right out, but I could tell he had other ideas about it.
    In particular, when I told him how I wanted the new dogwood trees planted, he asked me, “In a row?” And I could hear the disappointment in his voice. But I was stubborn, as usual. So maybe I should listen to his ideas, at least. For after all, he was a gentleman of impeccable taste.
    While I was lying there, thinking, I heard him walk past my window on the gravel driveway—on his way to the river to paint, as he always did on Sunday mornings.
    Yes—a gentleman of impeccable taste!

Chapter Ten
     
    When Mr. Oto arrived at the riverbank, Sophie was already there, painting and with the early sunlight in her hair and a breeze off the river lifting a loose tendril of hair at her temples.
    Once, in a book Miss Anne had brought to him from the library, he had seen pictures of many great paintings, and now, watching her, he wished deeply that he knew how to paint such magnificent pictures. For surely, only such a painting could do justice to her.
    While he stood there, she hesitated in her painting and then once again turned to look directly at him. Her round, pink face, the deep green eyes, the careless way the white, open-collared blouse lay upon her shoulders—all these things worked together so that his face tingled, as if he had been briefly burned by a flash of sunlight.
    And once again, in the church, the singing began: “ Love lifted me! Love lifted me! When nothing else could help, Love lif-ted meee!”
    “Good morning,” she said. And there was more in those same words than had been in them on the weekday mornings.
    “Good