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148
The Country of the Pointed Firs
·
Sarah Orne Jewett
3
After
a
first
brief
visit
made
two
or
three
summers
before
in
the
course
of
a
yachting
cruise,
a
lover
of
Dunnet
Landing
returned
to
find
the
unchanged
shores
of
the
pointed
firs,
the
same
quaintness
of
the
village
with
its
elaborate
conventionalities;
all
that
mixture
of
remoteness,
and
childish
certainty
of
being
the
centre
of
civilization
of
which
her
affectionate
dreams
had
told.
One
evening
in
June,
a
single
passenger
landed
upon
the
steamboat
wharf.
The
tide
was
high,
there
was
a
fine
crowd
of
spectators,
and
the
younger
portion
of
the
company
followed
her
with
subdued
excitement
up
the
narrow
street
of
the
salt-aired,
white-clapboarded
little
town.
II.
Mrs.
Todd
LATER,
THERE
WAS
only
one
fault
to
find
with
this
choice
of
a
summer
lodging-place,
and
that
was
its
complete
lack
of
seclusion.
At
first
the
tiny
house
of
Mrs.
Almira
Todd,
which
stood
with
its
end
to
the
street,
appeared
to
be
retired
and
sheltered
enough
from
the
busy
world,
behind
its
bushy
bit
of
a
green
garden,
in
which
all
the
blooming
things,
two
or
three
gay
hollyhocks
and
some
London-pride,
were
pushed
back
against
the
gray-shingled
wall.
It
was
a
queer
little
garden
and
puzzling
to
a
stranger,
the
few
flowers
being
put
at
a
disadvantage
by
so
much
greenery;
but
the
discovery
was
soon
made
that
Mrs.
Todd
was
an
ardent
lover
of
herbs,
both
wild
and
tame,
and
the
sea-breezes
blew
into
the
low
end-window
of
the
house
laden
with
not
only
sweet-brier
and
sweet-mary,
but
balm
and
sage
and
borage
and
mint,
wormwood
and
southernwood.
If
Mrs.
Todd
had
occasion
to
step
into
the
far
corner
of
her
herb
plot,
she
trod
heavily
upon
thyme,
and
made
its
fragrant
presence
known
with
all
the
rest.
Being
a
very
large
person,
her
full
skirts
brushed
and
bent
almost
every
slender
stalk
that
her
feet
missed.
You
could
always
tell
when
she
was
stepping
about
there,
even
when
you
were
half
awake
in
the
morning,
and
learned
to
know,
in
the
course
of
a
few
weeks'
experience,
in
exactly
which
corner
of
the
garden
she
might
be.
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