Jackson, Helen Hunt, 1830-1885 / 2008-10-03 00:00:00
"Yes, yes, Marty. Tell my mother I will be there in a moment," replied
Stephen, as he walked slowly toward the house; even then noting, with the
keen and relentless glance of a beauty-worshipper, how grotesquely ugly
the old woman's wrinkled face became, lighted up by the intense
cross-light. Old Marty's face had never looked other than lovingly into
Stephen's since he first lay in her arms, twenty-five years ago, when she
came, a smooth-cheeked, rosy country-woman of twenty-five, to nurse his
mother at the time of his birth. She had never left the home since. With a
faithfulness and devotion only to be accounted for by the existence of
rare springs of each in her own nature, surely not by any uncommon
lovableness in either Mr. or Mrs. White, or by any especial comforts in
her situation, she had stayed on a quarter of a century, in the hard
position of woman of all work in a poor family. She worshipped Stephen,
and, as I said, her face had never once looked other than lovingly into
his; but he could not remember the time when he had not thought her
hideous. She had a big brown mole on her chin, out of which grew a few
bristling hairs. It was an unsightly thing, no doubt, on a woman's chin;
and sometimes, when Marty was very angry, the hairs did actually seem to
bristle, as a cat's whiskers do. When Stephen could not speak plain, he
used to point his little dimpled finger at this mole and say, "Do doe
away,--doe away;" and to this day it was a torment to him.
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