E-text prepared by Brendan Lane, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
NELLIE L. McCLUNG
1921
It was the last day of February, the extra day, dead still, and bitingcold, with thick, lead-colored skies shading down to inky blue at thewestern horizon. In the ravine below John Watson's house trees crackedominously in the frost, and not even a rabbit was stirring. The henshad not come out, though an open door had extended an invitation, andthe tamworths had burrowed deeper into the stack of oat straw. Thecattle had taken refuge in the big shed, and even old Nap, in spite ofhis thick Coat, had whimpered at the door to be let in.
Looking out of the western window, Pearl Watson, with a faint wrinklebetween her eyebrows, admitted to herself that it was not a cheerfulday. And Pearl had her own reasons for wanting fine weather, fortomorrow was the first of March, and the day to which she had beenlooking forward for three years to make a momentous decision.
The thought of this day had gone with her in the three years that hadpassed, like a radiant gleam, a glorious presence that brightened andidealized every experience of life, a rainbow that glorified everyblack cloud, and there had been some clouds in her life black enoughto bring out the rainbows' colors too; as when her mother's seriousillness had called her back from the city, where she was attendingschool. But each day had brought her one day nearer the great day,which now she could call "Tomorrow."
It had never occurred to Pearl to doubt the young doctor's sincerity,when, three years before, he had said he would wait until she waseighteen years old before he asked her something.
"And it will depend on your answer," he had said, "what sort of a dayit is. It may be a dark, cold, horrible day, with cruel, biting wind,or it may be a glorious day, all sunshine and blue sky—that will alldepend on your answer." And she had told him, honestly and truthfully,not being skilled in the art of coquetry, that "it generally was fineon the first of March."
That the young doctor might have forgotten all about the incidentnever crossed her mind in the years that followed. She did not knowthat there was witchery in her brown eyes and her radiant young beautythat would stir any young man's heart and loosen his tongue, causinghim to say what in his sober moments he would regard as foolishness.
Pearl did not know this; she only knew that a great radiance had cometo her that day, three years before, a radiance whose glory had notdimmed. Every thought and action of her life had been influenced byit, and she had developed like a fine