Ariel Custer

Ariel Custer stood for a moment on the old white pillared porch of her childhood’s home and watched the wagon drive out the gate and down the road toward town with the last pieces of her grandmother’s dear old furniture. They were being taken to Ezra Brownleigh’s to be stored for her until some time in the dim and distant future when she should be able to wrest from the great unfriendly world a home and a spot to put them. Ezra Brownleigh had bought them in for her at the auction sale the week before.

It was very early in the morning and the sun was still making long slant rays of brightness over the old lawn between the oak trees, and shrubs. A mocking-bird was singing wildly sweet in the maple by the library window as if there were no such thing as sorrow and desolation in the bright world, fairly splitting his throat with praise; and in the intervals of his trills Ariel could hear the creaking of one wagon wheel as it lumbered over the ruts on the old Virginia road. It seemed to be lumbering over her stricken young heart as she watched it out of sight down the familiar road.