Short Fiction · The Red Roses of Tonia (2/2)

At the gate stood Tonia, with undisguised tears upon her cheeks. In her hand she held Burrow’s Lone Elm hat, and it was at its white roses, hated by her, that she wept. For her friends were telling her, with the ecstatic joy of true friends, that cartwheels could not be worn, being three seasons passed into oblivion.

“Put on your old hat and come, Tonia,” they urged.

“For Easter Sunday?” she answered. “I’ll die first.” And wept again.

The hats of the fortunate ones were curved and twisted into the style of spring’s latest proclamation.

A strange being rode out of the brush among them, and there sat his horse languidly. He was stained and disfigured with the green of the grass and the limestone of rocky roads.

“Hallo, Pearson,” said Daddy Weaver. “Look like you’ve been breaking a mustang. What’s that you’ve got tied to your saddle⁠—a pig in a poke?”

“Oh, come on, Tonia, if you’re going,” said Betty Rogers. “We mustn’t wait any longer. We’ve saved a seat in the buckboard for you. Never mind the hat. That lovely muslin you’ve got on looks sweet enough with any old hat.”

Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on his saddle. Tonia looked at him with a sudden hope. Pearson was a man who created hope. He got the thing loose and handed it to her. Her quick fingers tore at the strings.

“Best I could do,” said Pearson slowly. “What Road Runner and me done to it will be about all it needs.”

“Oh, oh! it’s just the right shape,” shrieked Tonia. “And red roses! Wait till I try it on!”

She flew in to the glass, and out again, beaming, radiating, blossomed.

“Oh, don’t red become her?” chanted the girls in recitative. “Hurry up, Tonia!”

Tonia stopped for a moment by the side of Road Runner.

“Thank you, thank you, Wells,” she said, happily. “It’s just what I wanted. Won’t you come over to Cactus tomorrow and go to church with me?”

“If I can,” said Pearson. He was looking curiously at her hat, and then he grinned weakly.

Tonia flew into the buckboard like a bird. The vehicles sped away for Cactus.

“What have you been doing, Pearson?” asked Daddy Weaver. “You ain’t looking so well as common.”

“Me?” said Pearson. “I’ve been painting flowers. Them roses was white when I left Lone Elm. Help me down, Daddy Weaver, for I haven’t got any more paint to spare.”