The Romancing of Evangeline Ipswich Read online

  At one time, my Uncle Rusty (Hubert Switzler) was staying with us. We had a snowstorm during the night. The next morning my dad asked Uncle Rusty how he had slept. Uncle Rusty retorted, “(Blankecy Blank), it snowed in my face all night!” As was his usual characteristic, my dad bent over with laughter.

  The attic was a neat place to sneak away to for a little privacy (especially since I didn’t have a window seat). One Christmas season when I was still very young, I came home from school, slipped up to the attic, and made red and green construction paper chains. (Yes, Skeeter, we had construction paper when I was young.) I was having so much fun I hardly noticed I had turned into a block of ice until Mom found me.

  Then winters arrived with cold and wind again and snow and ice and the car not starting and Dad having to walk two and a half miles to work and having to do chores night and morning half frozen; breaking ice on the horse tank so the animals could drink, feeding horses and cows and pigs and chickens and milking cows. Days when Mom would keep us home from school because it was so cold and maybe just because she wanted some company.

  I was never required to help outside except for getting in the kindling, coal, and water. My dad was a staunch believer that women’s work was in the house and maybe in the garden but not out in the cold tending livestock except in an emergency, and not working away from home. He seemed to have a feeling that his mother literally had been worked to death after they moved from Kansas to Colorado. She died at age 62 of a stroke.

  Christmases were great fun at our house. Santa Claus bought us each a nice gift and filled our stockings with oranges, candy, and nuts. Mom and Dad always gave us each a couple of small gifts, usually clothes and some little trinket.

  The Christmas of 1954, my senior year, I got a Lane cedar chest, which I still have. Sharon got a piano, which she still has, Wayne got a .22 rifle, and Russell got a pair of boots, a black cowboy outfit, and a toy gun belt with two holsters and toy guns. After Dad started managing the Lemon’s Feed Store, he got a bonus twice a year one of which was around Christmas. This year I’m sure most if not all of his bonus went for Christmas. I don’t know how much they paid for my cedar chest, but I do know Sharon’s piano was $90.

  Other gifts I remember receiving from my parents are two Shirley Temple books and Patty O’Neal on the Airways, which I still have. Another book they gave me at some time was The Swiss Family Robinson. These may have been birthday gifts. These are the only books I ever remember owning until recent years except for my scriptures and some church books and The Little Red Hen, which Aunt Opal gave me while we were still at Westcliffe.

  Other Christmas gifts I remember receiving are a Bible, which I requested, a jewelry box, a string of “pearls,” and a pink sweater set. The last three were all received at one Christmas I think in 1953. Normally, we never received a lot of gifts like so many do today, but it was a lot to us. I also have the remains of a big baby doll that still cries but whose two front teeth have fallen inside. She also has a broken leg. My sister stepped on it. Guess I should have kept her off the attic floor.

  As another rambling, pointless sidenote—the baby doll my mom mentions is in my possession now. Some twenty-five years ago, I couldn’t stand the thought of the poor baby doll being buried in a trunk out in the garage! I mean, how on earth was she able to breathe in there? Nightmare, right? Knowing that her smothering baby doll in the trunk horrified me so, Mom dug the precious doll out of the trunk so she could breathe more easily and gave her to me. That old, banged-up composite doll with the shattered and then glued-back-together leg had now been a part of my own family for over twenty-five years. Today she sits in our front room, in an old wicker dolly sled, wearing a pretty Christmas plaid dress, a white baby bonnet, and a white faux fur cape, with her small, well-loved hands tucked into a white faux fur muff. Although the poor little thing kind of always creeps out little kids (even my own kids when they were really little), my little eighteen-month-old grandson seems to love the baby doll and probably thinks she’s real—because for about six months now, whenever he’s over, he always talks to her, rocks her little sleigh, and gives her a kiss on the mouth! Is that adorable or what? When my mom was still able to remember that I had the doll, she always told me that she was so glad her baby doll was out where she could breathe well and be loved. I love my mom so much!

  Snippet #8—And now for my final snippet, which is me endeavoring to leave you with some added loveliness! Finishing The Romancing of Evangeline Ipswich found me feeling liberated of sorts. I’d spent almost two years in that same venue of writing (western, same basic characters being the Ipswich family), and I was more than ready to move on to a new project. And so, I leave you with the poem that I included an excerpt from in the beginning of this author’s note—because it uplifts me and is such a beautiful piece of beauty and respite to me, and it helped me in finding my enjoyment in writing Evangeline’s story. That’s how thoroughly I love the words James Whitcomb Riley put together so eloquently in that poem. Thus, being that the poem is public domain, and therefore I’m able to print it here for you, I have! I hope you’ll take the time to savor it—and not just once but anytime you feel your mind, heart, and soul need a lift.

  *I’ve listed a few words, and their definitions, that may be unfamiliar to you because they aren’t commonly used anymore to allow you to read the poem more smoothly.

  Kine—“Cows collectively.”

  Bobolink and Killdee are both birds.

  Freak—in this instance means “to fleck or streak randomly.”

  Mascadine—“wine grapes.”

  Shallop—“a sailboat.”

  The South Wind and the Sun!

  O The South Wind and the Sun!

  How each loved the other one

  Full of fancy—full folly—

  Full of jollity and fun!

  How they romped and ran about,

  Like two boys when school is out,

  With glowing face, and lisping lip,

  Low laugh, and lifted shout!

  And the South Wind—he was dressed

  With a ribbon round his breast

  That floated, flapped and fluttered

  In a riotous unrest,

  And a drapery of mist

  From the shoulder and the wrist

  Flowing backward with the motion

  Of the waving hand he kissed.

  And the Sun had on a crown

  Wrought of gilded thistle-down,

  And a scarf of velvet vapor,

  And a raveled-rainbow gown;

  And his tinsel-tangled hair,

  Tossed and lost upon the air,

  Was glossier and flossier

  Than any anywhere.

  And the South Wind’s eyes were two

  Little dancing drops of dew,

  As he puffed his cheeks, and pursed his lips,

  And blew and blew and blew!

  And the Sun’s—like diamond-stone,

  Brighter yet than ever known,

  As he knit his brows and held his breath,

  And shone and shone and shone!

  And this pair of merry fays

  Wandered through the summer days;

  Arm-in-arm they went together

  Over heights of morning haze—

  Over slanting slopes of lawn

  They went on and on and on,

  Where the daisies looked like star-tracks

  Trailing up and down the dawn.

  And where’er they found the top

  Of a wheat-stalk droop and lop

  They chucked it underneath the chin

  And praised the lavish crop,

  Till it lifted with the pride

  Of the heads it grew beside,

  And then the South Wind and the Sun

  Went onward satisfied.

  Over meadow-lands they tripped,

  Where the dandelions dipped

  In crimson foam of clover-bloom,

  And dripped and dripped and dripped;


  And they clinched the bumble-stings,

  Gauming honey on their wings,

  And bundling them in lily-bells,

  With maudlin murmurings.

  And the humming-bird that hung

  Like a jewel up among

  The tilted honeysuckle-horns,

  They mesmerized, and swung

  In the palpitating air,

  Drowsed with odors strange and rare,

  And with whispered laughter, slipped away,

  And left him hanging there.

  And they braided blades of grass

  Where the truant had to pass;

  And they wriggled through the rushes

  And the reeds of the morass,

  Where they danced, in rapture sweet,

  O’er the leaves that laid a street

  Of undulant mosaic for

  The touches of their feet.

  By the brook with mossy brink

  Where the cattle came to drink.

  They trilled and piped and whistled

  With the thrush and bobolink,

  Till the kine in listless pause,

  Switched their tails in mute applause,

  With lifted heads and dreamy eyes,

  And bubble-dripping jaws.

  And where the melons grew,

  Streaked with yellow, green and blue

  These jolly sprites went wandering

  Through spangled paths of dew;

  And the melons, here and there,

  They made love to, everywhere

  Turning their pink souls to crimson

  With caresses fond and fair.

  Over orchard walls they went,

  Where the fruited boughs were bent

  Till they brushed the sward beneath them

  Where the shine and shadow blent;

  And the great green pear they shook

  Till the sallow hue forsook

  Its features, and the gleam of gold

  Laughed out in every look.

  And they stroked the downy cheek

  Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek,

  And flushed it into splendor;

  And with many an elfish freak,

  Gave the russet’s rust a wipe—

  Prankt the rambo with a stripe,

  And the wine-sap blushed its reddest

  As they spanked the pippins ripe.

  Through the woven ambuscade

  That the twining vines had made,

  They found the grapes, in clusters,

  Drinking up the shine and shade—

  Plumpt like tiny skins of wine,

  With a vintage so divine

  That the tongue of fancy tingled

  With the tang of muscadine.

  And the golden-banded bees,

  Droning o’er the flowery leas,

  They bridled, reigned, and rode away

  Across the fragrant breeze,

  Till in hollow oak and elm

  They had groomed and stabled them

  In waxen stalls oozed with dews

  Of rose and lily-stem.

  Where the dusty highway leads,

  High above the wayside weeds

  They sowed the air with butterflies

  Like blooming flower-seeds,

  Till the dull grasshopper sprung

  Half a man’s height up, and hung

  Tranced in the heat, with whirring wings,

  And sung and sung and sung!

  And they loitered, hand in hand,

  Where the snipe along the sand

  Of the river ran to meet them

  As the ripple meets the land,

  Till the dragon-fly, in light

  Gauzy armor, burnished bright,

  Came tilting down the waters

  In a wild, bewildered flight.

  And they heard the killdee’s call,

  And afar, the waterfall,

  But the rustle of a falling leaf

  They heard above it all;

  And the trailing willow crept

  Deeper in the tide that swept

  The leafy shallop to the shore,

  And wept and wept and wept!

  And the fairy vessel veered

  From its moorings—tacked and steered

  For the centre of the current

  Sailed away and disappeared:

  And the burthen that it bore

  From the long-enchanted shore—

  “Alas! The South Wind and the Sun!”

  I murmur evermore.

  For the South Wind and the Sun,

  Each so loves the other one,

  For all his jolly folly

  And frivolity and fun,

  That our love for them they weigh

  As their fickle fancies may,

  And when at last we love them most,

  They laugh and sail away.

  ~James Whitcomb Riley

  Three Little Girls Dressed in Blue Trilogy ,

  Book One...

  The Bewitching of Amoretta Ipswich

  by Marcia Lynn McClure.

  The spirit of adventure and curiosity that dwelled within her bosom was passionate with excitement! It was obvious there was something wildly interesting inside the gristmill, and Amoretta silently swore to herself she would discover what it was no matter what. She promised herself that nothing short of torture could keep her from seeing what was inside now that her feet were set on the path.

  Amoretta carefully knelt in the cool grass shaded by mill and trees. Once Prudence and Blanche had knelt down with the others, Prudence pointed to the low, loosely hanging board, indicating that Amoretta and Calliope should look through the open space it presented.

  Amoretta’s heart was pounding like the rapids of some raging river! What were they about to witness? Spirits roaming the old mill? Pirates? Outlaws? Her imagination couldn’t list possibilities quickly enough.

  And then, all at once—in the space of a moment and a short gasp—Amoretta Ipswich knew exactly why the young ladies of Meadowlark Lake liked to sneak out to the gristmill and peep through the loose siding board.

  “Oh my—” Amoretta’s exclamation of astonishment was silenced by Winnie’s hand quickly covering her mouth.

  Three Little Girls Dressed in Blue Trilogy,

  Book Two...

  The Secret Bliss of Calliope Ipswich

  by Marcia Lynn McClure.

  Blanche’s pretty forehead puckered with a slight frown. “You don’t like Fox as much as he likes you, do you, Calliope? You’re not in love with him.”

  Calliope silently scolded herself for having let her countenance and words reveal her secret to Blanche. The truth was that she was not as sweet on Fox Montrose as he was on her. Yet there were secrets in her heart that could never be revealed to anyone—not even to Blanche, not even to Calliope’s own sisters.

  Therefore, she chose a counter maneuver with which to distract Blanche and said, “Oh, I adore Fox! I just think these things may take time, you know, for me to…to…”

  “To really fall in love with him, you mean,” Blanche finished.

  “Yes. Perhaps that is what I mean,” Calliope responded.

  Yet as they neared the Montrose house, trepidation welled up in Calliope’s bosom, for she knew that if she hadn’t fallen in love with Fox Montrose by now, she never would. Furthermore, she didn’t want to.

  A secret bliss was nestled deep inside Calliope Ipswich. It had been nestled there from nearly the moment the Ipswich family had arrived in Meadowlark Lake all those months past. And though it was a bliss she owned in knowing something about herself that even her own sisters did not know, it likewise brought her pain at times—for it was the very reason she knew she would never fall in love with Fox Montrose. Calliope’s love was already spoken for—and no one in all the wide world, save Calliope Ipswich herself, would ever know it.

  To the man of my dreams…

  My husband, Kevin!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Marcia Lynn McClure’s intoxicating succe
ssion of novels, novellas, and e-books—including Dusty Britches, The Whispered Kiss, The Haunting of Autumn Lake, and The Bewitching of Amoretta Ipswich—has established her as one of the most favored and engaging authors of true romance. Her unprecedented forte in weaving captivating stories of western, medieval, regency, and contemporary amour void of brusque intimacy has earned her the title “The Queen of Kissing.”

  Marcia, who was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has spent her life intrigued with people, history, love, and romance. A wife, mother, grandmother, family historian, poet, and author, Marcia Lynn McClure spins her tales of splendor for the sake of offering respite through the beauty, mirth, and delight of a worthwhile and wonderful story.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  A Bargained-For Bride

  Beneath the Honeysuckle Vine

  A Better Reason to Fall in Love

  The Bewitching of Amoretta Ipswich

  Born for Thorton’s Sake

  The Chimney Sweep Charm

  Christmas Kisses

  A Crimson Frost

  Daydreams

  Desert Fire

  Divine Deception

  Dusty Britches

  The Fragrance of her Name

  A Good-Lookin’ Man

  The Haunting of Autumn Lake

  The Heavenly Surrender

  The Highwayman of Tanglewood

  Kiss in the Dark

  Kissing Cousins

  The Light of the Lovers’ Moon

  Love Me

  The Man of Her Dreams

  The McCall Trilogy

  Midnight Masquerade