Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
The Doctor’s Sweetheart
The story I’m excerpting today is one of Lucy Maud’s amusing romantic comedies. Judith is 27 years old and lives with her aunt. Judith has never been married – which basically causes her aunt conniption fits every time she thinks about. 27! And never married! It’s not that Judith isn’t pretty, or wifely, or a good match … it’s that the guy she has been secretly in love with since she was a kid – is not approved of by her aunt – who has chosen somebody else for her. Judith will not settle – and it’s not like the guy she loves has ever declared himself. So it’s a stalemate. Judith – a lovely laughing pretty girl – sits at home with her aunt, listening to her aunt bemoan the shame of being 27 and unmarried. Judith takes it all rather philosophically – she’s not a gloom and doom type.
But then one day – Judith snaps. She declares to her complaining aunt that she will “marry the first man who asks”. Word gets out in the little town – and word eventually reaches the guy Judith secretly loves – as well as the suitor her aunt approves of (as a matter of fact, her aunt sends the man an urgent message telling him to COME OVER HERE QUICK). And the two men end up having a race to get to Judith first – involving buggies racing across fields and fording streams, etc. The entire town gets involved – people rooting for one or the other – and Judith, who made a big show of saying she didn’t care WHO she married – of course waits, with baited breath, to see if HER chosen one will reach her first.
It’s a fun story – and I really like Judith’s spunky personality.
Excerpt from The Doctor’s Sweetheart
The afternoon that Mrs. Tony Mack came in Mrs. Theodora felt more aggrieved than ever. Ellie McGregor had been married the previous week – Ellie, who was the same age as Judith and not half so good looking. Mrs. Theodora had been nagging Judith ever since.
“But I might as well talk to the trees down there in that hollow,” she complained to Mrs. Tony. “That girl is so set and contrary minded. She doesn’t care a bit for my feelings.”
This was not said behind Judith’s back. The girl herself was standing at the open door, drinking in all the delicate, evasive beauty of the spring afternoon. The Whitney house crested a bare hill that looked down on misty intervals, feathered with young firs that were golden green in the pale sunlight. The fields were bare and smoking, although the lanes and shadowy places were full of moist snow. Judith’s face was aglow with the delight of mere life and she bent out to front the brisk, dancing wind that blew up from the valley, resinous with the odors of firs and damp mosses.
At her aunt’s words the glow went out of her face. She listened with her eyes brooding on the hollow and a glowing flame of temper smouldering in them./ Judith’s long patience was giving way. She had been flicked on the raw too often of late. And now her aunt was confiding her grievances to Mrs. Tony Mack – the most notorious gossip in Ramble Valley or out of it!
“I can’t sleep at nights for worrying over what will become of her when I’m gone,” went on Mrs. Theodora dismally. “She’ll just have to live on alone here – a lonesome withered-up old maid. And her that might have had her pick, MRs. Tony, though I do say it as shouldn’t. You must feel real thankful to have all your girls married off – especially when none of them was extry good-looking. Some people have all the luck. I’m tired of talking to Judith. Folks’ll be saying soon that nobody ever really wanted her, for all her flirting. But she just won’t marry.”
“I will!”
Judith whirled about on the sun warm door step and came in. Her black eyes were flushing and her round cheeks were crimson.
“Such a temper you never saw!” reported Mrs. Tony afterwards. “Though ’tweren’t to be wondered at. Theodora was most awful aggravating.”
“I will,” repeated Judith stormily. “I’m tired of being nagged day in and day out. I’ll marry – and what is more I’ll marry the first man that asks me – that I will, if it is old Widower Delane himself! How does that suit you, Aunt Theodora?”
Mrs. Theodora’s mental processes were never slow. She dropped her knitting ball and stooped for it. In that time she had decided what to do. She knew that Judith would stick to her word, Stewart-like, and she must trim her sails to catch this new wind.
“It suits me real well, Judith,” she said calmly, “you can marry the first man that asks you and I’ll say no word to hinder.”
The color went out of Judith’s face, leaving it pale as ashes. Her hasty assertion had no sooner been uttered than it was repented of, but she must stand by it now. She went out of the kitchen without another glance at her aunt or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a gay tattoo on the window panes to the music of the wind.
Judith sat in her little rocker and dropped her pointed chin in her hands.
