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motionlessness.
Two little girls in pink frocks came racing past; theirflying heels almost touched her, but they never saw
her.
When they were well past, she drew a cautious breath,and felt again of the treasure around her neck.
After a while she heard the soft padding of many hoofsin the heavy dust of the road, a dog's shrill bark,
thetinkle of a bell, the absent-minded shout of a weary man. The hired man was driving the cows home.
The fragranceof milk-dripping udders, of breaths sweetened with clo-ver and meadow-grass, came to
her. Suddenly a coldnose rubbed against her face; the dog had found her out.But she was a friend of his.
She patted him, then pushed him away gently, and he understood that she wished toremain concealed.
He went barking back to the man.The cows broke into a clumsy gallop; the man shouted.
210 Mary E. Wilkins
Diantha smelled the dust of the road which flew over thefield like smoke. She heard the children
returning downthe road behind the cows. When the cows galloped, they screamed with half-fearful
delight. Then it all passed by,and she heard the loud clang of a bell from the farm-house.
Then Diantha pulled out the treasure which was sus-pended from her neck by an old blue ribbon, and
sheheld it up to the low western sun, and wonderful lightsof red and blue and violet and green and orange
danced over the shaven stubble of the field before her delightedeyes. It was a prism which she had stolen
from the best-parlor lamp from the lamp which had been her own mother's, bought by her with her
school-teaching moneybefore her marriage, and brought by her to grace hernew home.
Diantha Fielding, as far as relatives went, was in acurious position. First her mother died when she was
very young, only a few months old; then her father hadmarried again, giving her a stepmother; then her
fatherhad died two years later, and her stepmother had married again, giving her a stepfather. Since then
the stepmotherhad died, and the stepfather had married a widow witha married daughter, whose two
children had raced downthe road behind the cows. Diantha often felt in a sorebewilderment of
relationships. She had not even a cousinof her own; the dearest relative she had was the daughter of a
widow whom a cousin of her mother's had marriedfor a second wife. The cousin was long since dead.
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Thewife was living, and Diantha's little step second cousin,as she reckoned it, lived in the old homestead
which had belonged to Diantha's grandfather, across the way fromthe May farm-house. It was a,
gambrel-roof, half-ruinous structure, well banked in front with a monstrous growthof lilacs, and overhung
by a great butternut-tree.
Diantha knew well that she was heaping up vials ofcold wrath upon her head by not obeying the supper-
bell, but she lay still. Then Libby came Libby, the littlecousin, stepping very cautiously and daintily; for
shewore slippers of her mother's, which hung from her smallheels, and she had lost them twice already.
She stopped before Diantha. Her slender arms, termi-
THE PRISM 211
nating in hands too large for them, hung straight at hersides in the folds of her faded blue-flowered
muslin. Herpretty little heat-flushed face had in it no more specula-tion than a flower, and no more
changing. She was likea flower, which would blossom the same next year, and the next year after that,
and the same until it died. There was no speculation in her face as she looked at Dianthadangling the
prism in the sunlight, merely unimaginativewonder and admiration.
"It's a drop off your best-parlor lamp," said she, inher thin, sweet voice.
"Look over the field, Libby!" cried Diantha, excitedly.
Libby looked.
"Tell me what you see, quick!"
"What I see? Why, grass and things."
"No, I don't mean them; what you see from this."
Diantha shook the prism violently.
"I see a lot of different colors dancing," replied Libby,"same as you always see. Addie Green had an
ear-dropthat was broken off their best-parlor lamp. Her mothergave it to her."
"Don't you see anything but different lights?"
"Of course I don't. That's all there is to see."
Diantha sighed.
"That drop ain't broken," said the other little girl."How did she happen to let you have it?" By "she"Libby
meant Diantha's stepmother.
"I took it," replied Diantha. She was fastening theprism around her neck again.
Libby gasped and stared at her. "Didn't you ask her?"
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