Read "The Queen of Sheba and my Cousin the Colonel" by Thomas Bailey Aldrich online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It had all happened so suddenly that one or two minutes passed before / Edward Lynde took in the full enormity of Mary's desertion. A dim smile / was still hovering about his lips when the yellow speck that was Mary / faded into the gray distance; then his countenance fell. There was no / sign of mortal habitation visible from the hillside where he stood; the / farm at which he had spent the night was five miles away; his stiff / riding-boots were ill-adapted to pedestrianism. The idea of lugging / that heavy saddle five miles over a mountain road caused him to knit / his brows and look very serious indeed. As he gave the saddle an / impatient kick, his eyes rested on the Bologna sausage, one end of / which protruded from the holster; then there came over him a poignant / recollection of his Lenten supper of the night before and his no / breakfast at all of that morning. He seated himself on the saddle, / unwrapped the sausage, and proceeded to cut from it two or three thin / slices.
"It might have been much worse," he reflected, as he picked off with / his penknife the bits of silver foil which adhered to the skin of the / sausage; "if Mary had decamped with the commissary stores, that would / have been awkward. " Lynde devoured the small pieces of pressed meat / with an appetite born of his long fast and the bracing upland air.