The Waiting Years
by Katharine Metcalf RoofGenre: Romance
Setting: America
Format of Original Source: Short Story
Recommended Adaptation Length: 60 Minutes
Candidate for Adaptation? Promising
EXCERPT:
Where I sit at my window, sweetheart, I can see the corner of the grape-arbor in your garden. Do you remember the day we sat there, and I read you my story, and you listened, with your great dreaming eyes on the slippery leaf shadows, and your mouth stained with the purple grapes? And when I had finished, you asked me, “Why did Reginald think he had to die, William?” And I told you, “Because he loved Eleanor so much and she loved another man.” “Then why didn’t he love some one else, too? How silly they all were!” you said. You were too young to understand. I look in the eyes of the little girl in the picture, and she does not understand. The little girl is a year younger than you, and the green-and-white frock in the picture was torn and darned last summer. I remember how you looked, bent over your needle, your red lips a little heavy with unspoken protest as you sewed the long rent. What a child you always were to tear your frocks and get berry stains on your white aprons and scratch your fingers and arms with briers! And how I have loved each scratch and stain. My sweet, wild little Allison! Now perhaps you begin to understand, to wonder and dream a little.
COMMENTS:
Promising setting; music and singing are central to the plot. Narrative is told through a series of letters. Looks like it might be awfully sentimental.
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