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- 2026-01-30T20:48:15.023Z
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- text
- the mended upper panes. I spoke. She shyly started, like some Tahiti
girl, secreted for a sacrifice, first catching sight, through palms, of
Captain Cook. Recovering, she bade me enter; with her apron brushed off
a stool; then silently resumed her own. With thanks I took the stool;
but now, for a space, I, too, was mute. This, then, is the
fairy-mountain house, and here, the fairy queen sitting at her fairy
window.
I went up to it. Downwards, directed by the tunneled pass, as through a
leveled telescope, I caught sight of a far-off, soft, azure world. I
hardly knew it, though I came from it.
“You must find this view very pleasant,” said I, at last.
“Oh, sir,” tears starting in her eyes, “the first time I looked out of
this window, I said ‘never, never shall I weary of this.’”
“And what wearies you of it now?”
“I don’t know,” while a tear fell; “but it is not the view, it is
Marianna.”
Some months back, her brother, only seventeen, had come hither, a long
way from the other side, to cut wood and burn coal, and she, elder
sister, had accompanied, him. Long had they been orphans, and now, sole
inhabitants of the sole house upon the mountain. No guest came, no
traveler passed. The zigzag, perilous road was only used at seasons by
the coal wagons. The brother was absent the entire day, sometimes the
entire night. When at evening, fagged out, he did come home, he soon
left his bench, poor fellow, for his bed; just as one, at last, wearily
quits that, too, for still deeper rest. The bench, the bed, the grave.
Silent I stood by the fairy window, while these things were being told.
“Do you know,” said she at last, as stealing from her story, “do you
know who lives yonder?—I have never been down into that country—away
off there, I mean; that house, that marble one,” pointing far across
the lower landscape; “have you not caught it? there, on the long
hill-side: the field before, the woods behind; the white shines out
against their blue; don’t you mark it? the only house in sight.”
I looked; and after a time, to my surprise, recognized, more by its
position than its aspect, or Marianna’s description, my own abode,
glimmering much like this mountain one from the piazza. The mirage haze
made it appear less a farm-house than King Charming’s palace.
“I have often wondered who lives there; but it must be some happy one;
again this morning was I thinking so.”
“Some happy one,” returned I, starting; “and why do you think that? You
judge some rich one lives there?”
“Rich or not, I never thought; but it looks so happy, I can’t tell how;
and it is so far away. Sometimes I think I do but dream it is there.
You should see it in a sunset.”
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