Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) by Isabel Miller Page A

sport for them, no real hard feelings, just exercise, but it was hard on me. I learned not to keep getting up as soon as I could for as long as I could, so I didn’t get hurt much. And little as I thought he could, Parson taught me a few ways to make a throw so I didn’t even necessarily lose. But I didn’t like fighting. It wasn’t just how me being female might come out. I didn’t like to fight. I never really knew for sure till then how much I had the feelings of a woman, and not only that but I rated a woman’s feelings higher.
    We were zigzagging across Massachusetts, no rush, just tending generally east with the idea of finally hitting the Boston Post Road back to New-York City in the fall. I was always ready to push on before Parson was, and get him to myself again. He seemed glad enough to linger three or four days, to sell a little more, or talk, or wait for the stage to bring him letters and more stock.
    After a town he’d have things to think over and write down. I’d keep quiet and stay out of his way until he was ready to look at me and talk again.
    When he would talk, it was wonderful. His mind was so full but still easy, and I doubt there was anything he didn’t know something about. The littlest thing reminded him, like Potiphar would shrug off a fly and Parson would tell me about the Hindoos who wouldn’t kill a fly, and from that to India, to how Columbus was looking for India when he found us, to how Columbus went home from his second voyage a prisoner in chains, to how up until Christianity everybody knew the earth was round, to how the planets swim around the sun, to how some people think the places the planets are when you’re born make a mark on you that you never get over. Like I was born when the sun was in a place called Leo and I have more in common with other people of Leo than with my own family. All from a fly on Potiphar’s hide. Patience was born when the sun was at Aquarius. Parson’s sun was in Gemini.
    I loved his talk, but one day when I clapped him on the back and said so, plain out, “I love your talk,” he climbed down and stayed in the van all day. I hardly got a glimpse of him all that day, though he claimed he wasn’t sick.
    Next day it was midmorning before he got up beside me and yet he still acted sleepy. He never did sing or play his flute, all that day. I read my lesson to him, but I doubt he listened. He was in some kind of deep sad thought, so I pushed my leg over closer, like a dog will put its head in your lap when it sees you need comfort.
    “Sam, I wish I believed you were twenty-two.”
    “I am. I was twenty-two on the thirty-first of July.”
    “Will you swear it?”
    I was sure puzzled but I said, “Yes, I swear it.”
    “I’d like to stop sitting on my hands. I’ve very tired of sitting on my hands.”
    “I though that was just your way.”
    “Just lately.”
    Had he guessed I was a woman? I took my leg back from pushing his, and slid over to my edge of the seat.
    “Have you changed your mind?” he asked.
    “What about?”
    “About what we have.”
    “No.”
    He put his hand on my knee.
    “Parson!”
    “Are you going to pretend that you don’t care for me?”
    “Not like that. Not that way. I can’t.”
    “Can’t or not, you do, and I do.”
    “Oh, no, Parson.”
    I leaned so far away from him I started to fall off the seat. He caught me and then kept his arm across my shoulder even after I had my balance back.
    “I suppose you think men don’t do this,” he said. “I assure you that men have loved and embraced each other since the beginning of time.”
    I knew how he liked to tell whoppers about other lands, but he didn’t have a laughy way this time. I didn’t know what to believe or think or do. I kept remembering Pa’s last warning to me, but would it apply in a case like this? I decided to say no more and hope for the best.
    Parson took his arm away and kept to his own side of the seat. I chanced a little look at him.