A Daughter of the Morning

He shook his head.

"I don't sell it," he says. "They won't buy it. I shall always be a philanthropist. The commodity," says he, "is books."

"Oh!" I says. "A book agent! I'd have taken you for a regular salesman."

"I tell you I don't sell 'em," he says. "Nobody will buy. I just write 'em."

I put down my other peach and looked at him.

"An author?" I says. "You?"

"Thank you," says he, "for believing me. Nobody else will. Now don't let's talk about that. Do you mind telling me something about yourself?"

"Oh," I says, "I've got a book all made out of wrapping paper. It ain't wrote yet, it's in the bottom drawer. But I'm going to write one."

"Good!" he says. "Tell me about that, too."

I don't know what made me, except the surprise of finding that he was what he was, instead of a traveling man. But the first thing I knew I was telling him about me; how I'd stopped school when I was fourteen, and had worked out for a little while in town; and then when the boys got the job in the blast furnace, I came home to help Ma. I told him how the only place I'd ever been, besides the village, was to the city, twice. Only two things I didn't tell him at first – about what home was like, and about Luke. But he got them both out of me. Because I wound up what I was telling him with something I thought was the thing to say. Lena Curtsy always said it.

"I've just been living at home for four years now," I said. "I s'pose it's the place for a girl."

I remember how calm and slow he was when he answered.

"Why no," he says. "Your home is about the last place in the world a girl of your age ought to be."

"What do you know about my home?" I asked him quick.

"I don't mean your home," he says. "I mean any home, if it's your parents' home. If you can't be in school, why aren't you out by this time doing some useful work of your own?"

"Work," I says. "I do work. I work like a dog."

"I don't mean doing your family's work," he said. "I mean doing your own work. Of course you're not going to tell me you're happy?"

"No," I says, "I ain't happy. I hate my work. I hate the kind of a home I live in. It's Bedlam, the whole time. I'm going to get married to get out of it."

"So you are going to be married," he says. "What's the man like – do you mind telling me that?"

I told him about Luke, just the way he is. While I talked he was eating his peaches. I'd been through with mine quite a while now, so I noticed him eat his. He done it kind of with the tips of his fingers. I liked to watch him. He sort of broke the peach. The juice didn't run down. I remembered how I must have et mine, and I felt ashamed.

Before I was all through about Luke, Joe come in with the trout, and some thin, crispy potatoes on the platter, and the toast and the marmalade; and Mr. Ember went to see about the coffee. He brought it out himself, and poured it himself – and it smelled like something I'd never smelled before. And now, when he begun to eat, I watched him. I broke my toast, like he done. I used my fork on the trout, like him, and I noticed he took his spoon out of his cup, and I done that, too, though I'd got so I could drink from a cup without a handle and hold the spoon with my finger, like the boys done. I kept tasting the coffee, too, instead of drinking it off at once, even when it was hot, like I'd learned the trick of. I didn't know but his way just happened to be his way, but I wanted to make sure. Anyway, I never smack my lips, and Luke and the boys do that.

"Now," he said, "while we enjoy this very excellent breakfast, will you do me the honor to let me tell you a little something about me?"

I don't see what honor that would be, and I said so. And then he told me things.

I'm sorry that I can't put them down. It was wonderful. It was just like a story the teacher tells you when you're little and not too old for stories. It turned out he'd been to Europe and to Asia. He'd done things that I never knew there was such things. But he didn't talk about him, he just talked about the things and the places. I forgot to eat. It seemed so funny that I, Cossy Wakely, should be listening to somebody that had done them things. He said something about a volcano.

"A volcano!" I says. "Do they have them now? I thought that was only when the geography was."

"But the geography is, you know," he says. "It is now."

"Did that big flat book all mean now?" I says. "I thought it meant long ago. I had a picture of the Ark and the flood and the Temple, and when the stars fell – "

"Oh, the fools!" he says to himself; but I didn't know who he meant, and I was pretty sure he must mean me.

All the while we were having breakfast, he talked with me. When it was over, and he'd paid the bill – I tried my best to see how much it was, so as to tell Lena Curtsy, but I couldn't – he turned around to me and he says:

"The grass is not wet this morning. It's high summer. Will you walk with me up to the top of that hill over there in the field? I want to show you the whole world."

"Sure," I says. "But you can't see much past Twiney's pasture from that little runt of a hill."

We climbed the fence. He put his hand on a post and vaulted the wire as good as the boys could have done. When he turned to help me, I was just doing the same thing. Then it come over me that maybe an author wouldn't think that was ladylike.

"I always do them that way," I says, kind of to explain.

"Is there any other way?" says he.

"No!" says I, and we both laughed. It was nice to laugh with him, and it was the first time we'd done it together.

The field was soft and shiny. There was pretty cobwebs. Everything looked new and glossy.

"Great guns!" I says. "Ain't it nice out here?"

"That's exactly what I've been thinking," says he.

We went along still for a little ways. It come to me that maybe, if I could only say some of the things that moved around on the outside of my head, he might like them. But I couldn't get them together enough.

"It makes you want to think nice thoughts," I says, by and by.

"Doesn't it?" he says, with his quick, straight look. "And when it does, then you do."

"I don't know enough," I says. "I wisht I did."

I'll never, never forget when we come to the top of the little hill. He stood there with nothing but the sky, blue as fury, behind him.

"Now look," he says. "There's New York, over there."

"You can't see New York from here!" I says. "Not with no specs that was ever invented."

He went right on. "Down there," he says, "are St. Louis and Cincinnati and New Orleans. Across there is Chicago. And away on there are two days of desert – two days, by express train! – and then mountains and a green coast, and San Francisco and the Pacific. And then all the things we talked about this morning: Japan and India and the Alps and London and Rome and the Nile."

I wondered what on earth he was driving at.

"Which do you want to do," says he, "go there, and try to find these places? You won't find them, you know. But at least, you'll know they're in the world. Or live down there in a little farm-house like that one and slave for Luke?"

"But I can't even try to find them places," I says. "How could I?"

"Maybe not," he says. "Maybe not. I don't say you could. All I mean is this, Why not think of your life as if you have really been born, and not as if you were waiting to be born?"