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Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 1849-1924

"The White People"

I have
never told man or woman. It was my secret and hers. I can tell you,
Ysobel. The change I saw was as if she was beginning to listen to
something--to listen.
"It was as if to a sound--far, far away at first. But cold and white as
stone she lay content, and listened. In the next hour the far-off
sound had drawn nearer, and it had become something else--something she
saw--something which saw her. First her young marble face had peace in
it; then it had joy. She waited in her young stone body until you were
born and she could break forth. She waited no longer then.
"Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he had not gone far from the
body that had held him when he fell. Perhaps he had felt lost for a bit
when he found himself out of it. But soon he had begun to call to her
that was like his own heart to him. And she had heard. And then, being
half away from earth herself, she had seen him and known he was waiting,
and that he would not leave for any far place without her. She was so
still that the big doctors thought more than once she had passed. But I
knew better."
It was long before I was old enough to be told anything like this that I
began to feel that the moor was in secret my companion and friend, that
it was not only the moot to me, but something else. It was like a thing
alive--a huge giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself, or
covering itself with thick, white mist which sometimes writhed and
twisted itself into wraiths.


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