The Little Woman in ‘Brolvn
AH SIL F. RANSOM.
HE sat at the little table,
waiting, waiting. A little
woman with brown hair,
brown face and a brown
dress. Her eyes were
brown, too; in them and
in her face a fire was
burning. Not brightly, as
we have seen flames leap
- i r- -
wni ¥ '
up, around and over, kissing with
their great red lips the thing which
they consume, but smouldering, pres
sed down, covered up, held within
her by a force handed down from the
Moorish ancestor who followed Taric
el Tuerto into Spain and built an
empire there. Her ancestor had in
vaded France, had crossed the Chan
nel with William the Conqueror; his
children, feeling too strongly the old
love of liberty and conquest, would
not submit to kingly d°potism in Eng
land. They had come to America long
before the thirteen colonies had uni
ted as one. They had fought their
way westward and ever westward un
til now, she, their daughter, with the
old Saracenic love of learning and
liberty, sat here in a dim room in
one of the great cities of the West,
waiting as she had waited many days
for fortune to come in such a guise
that she, too, might conquer a world.
