![]() ![]() She could hate with vigor, in spite of the severe peace of her expression. Sometimes Jane used to look down the road to the gray slant of the Rideing house rising out of the hollow, with a scowl of dissent. The bedridden old woman and the son and daughter had not been on friendly terms with Jane for years, and they had not entered each other's houses. ![]() In one of them lived a bedridden old woman, and her elderly son and daughter in the other, David Gleason. These simple excursions for bodily and spiritual food were all that brightened her life. She lived alone, she kept her old house in order, she made her simple garments always on Saturdays she harnessed her old horse into the wagon, and drove to the village three miles away for groceries on Sundays she drove as regularly to church. She was not an old woman, but she seemed to have settled into that stability of old age which comes before the final greatest change of all. Jane White looked as if she would always do her duty, but as if she would spare neither herself nor her friends, if they came in the way as if nothing could interpose between herself and her high tide mark, not even her own happiness nor that of others. From gazing all her life at such stern and mighty passers, the woman's face had gotten a look of inflexible peace. The waves floating an occasional fishing vessel, were all that passed before her front windows. In front of Jane White's house roared and surged, beating the rocky shores with unfailing tides, the great Atlantic. ![]()
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