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In Spite Of Myself
by
There was some unusual commotion at the well. It was an old-fashioned open one, with a chain and windlass. Aunt Lucy was peering anxiously down its mouth, from which a ladder was sticking. Just as I got there Gussie emerged from its depths with a triumphant face. Her skirt was muddy and draggled, her hair had tumbled down, and she held a dripping black cat.
“Coco must have fallen into the well last night,” she explained, as I helped her to the ground. “I missed him at milking-time, and when I came to the well this morning I heard the most ear-splitting yowls coming up from it. I couldn’t think where he could possibly be, for the water was quite calm, until I saw he had crept into a little crevice in the stones on the side. So I got a ladder and went down after him.”
“You should have called me,” I said sourly. “You might have killed yourself, going down there.”
“And Coco might have tumbled in and drowned while you were getting up,” retorted Gussie. “Besides, what was the need? I could go down as well as you.”
“No doubt,” I said, more sharply than I had any business to. “I don’t dream of disputing your ability to do anything you may take it into your head to do. Most young ladies are not in the habit of going down wells, however.”
“Perhaps not,” she rejoined, with freezing calmness. “But, as you may have discovered, I am not ‘most young ladies.’ I am myself, Augusta Ashley, and accountable to nobody but myself if I choose to go down the well every day for pure love of it.”
She walked off in her wet dress with her muddy cat. Gussie Ashley was the only girl I ever saw who could be dignified under such circumstances.
I was in a very bad humour with myself as I went off to see about having the well cleaned out. I had offended Gussie and I knew she would not be easily appeased. Nor was she. For a week she kept me politely, studiously, at a distance, in spite of my most humble advances. Rev. Carroll was a frequent caller, ostensibly to make arrangements about a Sunday school they were organizing in a poor part of the community. Gussie and he held long conversations on this enthralling subject. Then Gussie went on another visit to her friend, and when she came back so did Rev. Carroll.
One calm, hazy afternoon I was coming slowly up from the mills. Happening to glance at the kitchen roof, I gasped. It was on fire in one place. Evidently the dry shingles had caught fire from a spark. There was not a soul about save Gussie, Aunt Lucy, and myself. I dashed wildly into the kitchen, where Gussie was peeling apples.
“The house is on fire,” I exclaimed. Gussie dropped her knife and turned pale.
“Don’t wake Mother,” was all she said, as she snatched a bucket of water from the table. The ladder was still lying by the well. In a second I had raised it to the roof and, while Gussie went up it like a squirrel and dashed the water on the flames, I had two more buckets ready for her.
Fortunately the fire had made little headway, though a few minutes more would have given it a dangerous start. The flames hissed and died out as Gussie threw on the water, and in a few seconds only a small black hole in the shingles remained. Gussie slid down the ladder. She trembled in every limb, but she put out her wet hand to me with a faint, triumphant smile. We shook hands across the ladder with a cordiality never before expressed.
For the next week, in spite of Rev. Carroll, I was happy when I thought of Gussie and miserable when I thought of Nellie. I held myself in some way bound to her and–was she not my ideal? Undoubtedly!