The Stone Angel Read Online Free

would lower so seriously his string with its blob of well-chewed spruce gum. When he made a catch, he’d never spend it, or share it, not even if you’d given him the gum right out of your mouth. He’d put it away in his black tin cash box, along with the
shinplaster
, twenty-five cents in paper money, which the Toronto aunts had sent, and the half dollar Father bestowed at Christmas. He carried the key of that box around his neck like a St. Christopher medal or a crucifix. Dan and I used to tease him, dancing out of his reach.
    “Nyah, nyah, Miser Matt
,
You can’t catch me

For a bumblebee…”
    I never saw him take any money out of that box. He wasn’t saving for a jackknife or anything like that. How mean I used to think him. I never knew the truth of it until years later, years too late, after I’d grown up and wed and gone to live at the Shipley place. It was Aunt Dolly who told me.
    “Didn’t you know what he meant to do with his money, Hagar? I used to laugh at him, but he never paid any mind—that was Matt’s way. He meant to set up on his own, if you please, or study law down East, or buy a ship and go into the tea trade, such wild notions youngstersget. He’d have been going on seventeen, I guess, when it finally dawned on him that the handful of nickels and quarters he had wouldn’t take him far. Do you know what he did? It wasn’t a bit like Matt to go and do a thing like that. He bought a fighting cock from old man Doherty—spent the whole lot at once, like a fool, and overpaid, I don’t doubt. He matched it with one of Jules Tonnerre’s, and Mart’s lost, of course—what did he know of birds? He brought it home—you and Dan must’ve been out, for I mind I was in the kitchen by myself—and he sat and looked at it for the longest time. It was enough to turn your stomach, its feathers covered with blood and the thing breathing very queerly. Then he wrung its neck and buried it. I wasn’t sorry to see it go, I can tell you. It wouldn’t even have made a boiling fowl. Too tough to be eaten, but not tough enough to fight.”
    Daniel was a different sort entirely. He wouldn’t lift a finger to work, unless he was pushed to it. He was always delicate, and he knew very well the advantages of poor health. He’d shove away his porridge plate at breakfast, with the merest whiff of a sigh, and Auntie Doll would feel his forehead and ship him off to bed—“No school for you today, young man.” She’d run herself ragged, toting bowls of broth and mustard plasters up and down the stairs, and when he’d had his fill of coddling, he’d find himself feeling a trifle better and would progress to raspberry jelly and convalescence on the living-room sofa. Father had small patience with these antics, and used to say all Dan needed was fresh air and exercise. Sometimes he’d make Dan get up and get dressed, and would send him down to the store to clean out the warehouse. But sure as guns, if he did, the next day Dan would sprout chicken pox or something indisputable. It must have been mind over matter, for hecultivated illness as some people cultivate rare plants. Or so I thought then.
    When we were in our teens, Father used to let us have parties sometimes. He went over the list of intended guests and crossed off those he thought unsuitable. Among those of my age, Charlotte Tappen was always asked—that went without saying. Telford Simmons was allowed, but only just. Henry Pearl was an awkward one—his people were decent, but being farmers they wouldn’t have the proper clothes, Father decided, so it would only embarrass them for us to send an invitation. Lottie Drieser was never invited to our parties, but when she’d grown a doll-like prettiness and a bosom, Dan sneaked her in once and Father raised cain about it. Dan was fond of clothes, and when we had a party he would appear in something new, the money having been finagled from Auntie Doll. When he was not ill, he was the gayest one