The Way to Peace

Name: The Way to Peace
Author: Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

by Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

Pages: about 45
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 50 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 28 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

ATHALIA HALL stopped to get her breath and look back over the road climbing steeply up from the covered bridge. It was a little after five, and the delicate air of dawn was full of wood and pasture scents--the sweetness of bay and the freshness of dew-drenched leaves. In the valley night still hung like gauze under the trees, but the top of the hill was glittering with sunshine.
In her slim prettiness Athalia Hall looked like a girl, but she was thirty-four. Part of the girlishness lay in the smoothness of her white forehead and in the sincere intensity of her gaze. She wore a blue linen dress, and there was a little, soft, blue scarf under her chin; her white hat, with pink roses and loops of gray-blue ribbon, shadowed eager, unhumorous eyes, the color of forget-me-nots. Her husband was her senior by several years--a large, loose-limbed man, with a scholarly face and mild, calm eyes--eyes that were full of a singular tenacity of purpose. Just now his face showed the fatigue of the long climb up-hill; and when his wife, stopping to look back over the glistening tops of the birches, said, “I believe it’s half a mile to the top yet!” he agreed, breathlessly. “Hard work!” he said.
“It will be worth it when I get to the top and can see the view!” she declared, and began to climb again.
“All the same, this road will be mighty hot when the sun gets full on it,” her husband said; and added, anxiously, “I wish I had made you rest in the station until train-time.” She flung out her hands with an exclamation: “Rest! I hate rest!”
“Hold on, and I’ll give you a stick,” he called to her; “it’s a help when you’re climbing.” He pulled down a slender birch, and, setting his foot on it, broke it off at the root. She stopped, with an impatient gesture, and waited while he tore off handfuls of leaves and whittled away the side-shoots.

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The Way to Peace

From the opening

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