Explore "Three Women" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The short-sighted minister preached at Bay Bend / His long-winded sermon quite through to the end, / Unmindful there sat in the Somerville pew / A stranger whose pale handsome countenance drew / All eyes from his own reverend self; nor suspected / What Ruth and her brother too plainly detected / That the stranger was bored.
"Though his gaze never stirred / From the face of the preacher, his heart has not heard," / Ruth said to herself; and her soft mother-eye / Was fixed on his face with a look like a sigh / In its tremulous depths, as they rose to depart. / Then suddenly Roger, alert, seemed to start / And his dull, listless glance changed to one of surprise / And of pleasure. Ruth saw that the goal of his eyes / Was her friend Mabel Lee in the vestibule; fair / As a saint that is pictured with sun tangled hair / And orbs like the skies in October. She smiled, / And the saint disappeared in the innocent child / With an unconscious dower of beauty and youth / She paused in the vestibule waiting for Ruth / And seemed not to notice the warm eager gaze / Of two men fixed upon her in different ways.