The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, Volume II

THE DULHAM LADIES.

To be leaders of society in the town of Dulham was as satisfactory to Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda Dobin as if Dulham were London itself. Of late years, though they would not allow themselves to suspect such treason, the most ill-bred of the younger people in the village made fun of them behind their backs, and laughed at their treasured summer mantillas, their mincing steps, and the shape of their parasols.

They were always conscious of the fact that they were the daughters of a once eminent Dulham minister; but beside this unanswerable claim to the respect of the First Parish, they were aware that their mother’s social position was one of superior altitude. Madam Dobin’s grandmother was a Greenaple of Boston. In her younger days she had often visited her relatives, the Greenaples and Hightrees, and in seasons of festivity she could relate to a select and properly excited audience her delightful experiences of town life. Nothing could be finer than her account of having taken tea at Governor 65Clovenfoot’s, on Beacon Street, in company with an English lord, who was indulging himself in a brief vacation from his arduous duties at the Court of St. James.

“He exclaimed that he had seldom seen in England so beautiful and intelligent a company of ladies,” Madam Dobin would always say in conclusion. “He was decorated with the blue ribbon of the Knights of the Garter.” Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda thought for many years that this famous blue ribbon was tied about the noble gentleman’s leg. One day they even discussed the question openly; Miss Dobin placing the decoration at his knee, and Miss Lucinda locating it much lower down, according to the length of the short gray socks with which she was familiar.

“You have no imagination, Lucinda,” the elder sister replied impatiently. “Of course, those were the days of small-clothes and long silk stockings!”—whereat Miss Lucinda was rebuked, but not persuaded.

“I wish that my dear girls could have the outlook upon society which fell to my portion,” Madam Dobin sighed, after she had set these ignorant minds to rights, and enriched them by communicating the final 66truth about the blue ribbon. “I must not chide you for the absence of opportunities, but if our cousin Harriet Greenaple were only living, you would not lack enjoyment or social education.”

Madam Dobin had now been dead a great many years. She seemed an elderly woman to her daughters some time before she left them; they thought later that she had really died comparatively young, since their own years had come to equal the record of hers. When they visited her tall white tombstone in the orderly Dulham burying-ground, it was a strange thought to both the daughters that they were older women than their mother had been when she died. To be sure, it was the fashion to appear older in her day,—they could remember the sober effect of really youthful married persons in cap and frisette; but, whether they owed it to the changed times or to their own qualities, they felt no older themselves than ever they had. Beside upholding the ministerial dignity of their father, they were obliged to give a lenient sanction to the ways of the world for their mother’s sake; and they combined the two duties with reverence and impartiality.

67Madam Dobin was, in her prime, a walking example of refinement and courtesy. If she erred in any way, it was by keeping too strict watch and rule over her small kingdom. She acted with great dignity in all matters of social administration and etiquette, but, while it must be owned that the parishioners felt a sense of freedom for a time after her death, in their later years they praised and valued her more and more, and often lamented her generously and sincerely.

Several of her distinguished relatives attended Madam Dobin’s funeral, which was long considered the most dignified and elegant pageant of that sort which had ever taken place in Dulham. It seemed to mark the close of a famous epoch in Dulham history, and it was increasingly difficult forever afterward to keep the tone of society up to the old standard. Somehow, the distinguished relatives had one by one disappeared, though they all had excellent reasons for the discontinuance of their visits. A few had left this world altogether, and the family circle of the Greenaples and Hightrees was greatly reduced in circumference. Sometimes, in summer, a stray connection 68drifted Dulham-ward, and was displayed to the townspeople (not to say paraded) by the gratified hostesses. It was a disappointment if the guest could not be persuaded to remain over Sunday and appear at church. When household antiquities became fashionable, the ladies remarked upon a surprising interest in their corner cupboard and best chairs, and some distant relatives revived their almost forgotten custom of paying a summer visit to Dulham. They were not long in finding out with what desperate affection Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda clung to their mother’s wedding china and other inheritances, and were allowed to depart without a single teacup. One graceless descendant of the Hightrees prowled from garret to cellar, and admired the household belongings diligently, but she was not asked to accept even the dislocated cherry-wood footstool that she had discovered in the far corner of the parsonage pew.

Some of the Dulham friends had always suspected that Madam Dobin made a social misstep when she chose the Reverend Edward Dobin for her husband. She was no longer young when she married, and though she had gone through the wood and picked 69up a crooked stick at last, it made a great difference that her stick possessed an ecclesiastical bark. The Reverend Edward was, moreover, a respectable graduate of Harvard College, and to a woman of her standards a clergyman was by no means insignificant. It was impossible not to respect his office, at any rate, and she must have treated him with proper veneration for the sake of that, if for no other reason, though his early advantages had been insufficient, and he was quite insensible to the claims of the Greenaple pedigree, and preferred an Indian pudding to pie crust that was, without exaggeration, half a quarter high. The delicacy of Madam Dobin’s touch and preference in everything, from hymns to cookery, was quite lost upon this respected preacher, yet he was not without pride or complete confidence in his own decisions.

The Reverend Mr. Dobin was never very enlightening in his discourses, and was providentially stopped short by a stroke of paralysis in the middle of his clerical career. He lived on and on through many dreary years, but his children never accepted the fact that he was a tyrant, and served him humbly and patiently. He fell at last into a condition 70of great incapacity and chronic trembling, but was able for nearly a quarter of a century to be carried to the meeting-house from time to time to pronounce farewell discourses. On high days of the church he was always placed in the pulpit, and held up his shaking hands when the benediction was pronounced, as if the divine gift were exclusively his own, and the other minister did but say empty words. Afterward he was usually tired and displeased and hard to cope with, but there was always a proper notice taken of these too often recurring events. For old times’ and for pity’s sake and from natural goodness of heart, the elder parishioners rallied manfully about the Reverend Mr. Dobin; and whoever his successor or colleague might be, the Dobins were always called the minister’s folks, while the active laborer in that vineyard was only Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones, as the case might be. At last the poor old man died, to everybody’s relief and astonishment; and after he was properly preached about and lamented, his daughters, Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda, took a good look at life from a new standpoint, and decided that, now they were no longer constrained by home 71duties, they must make themselves of a great deal more use to the town.

Sometimes there is such a household as this (which has been perhaps too minutely described), where the parents linger until their children are far past middle age, and always keep them in a too childish and unworthy state of subjection. The Misses Dobin’s characters were much influenced by such an unnatural prolongation of the filial relationship, and they were amazingly slow to suspect that they were not so young as they used to be. There was nothing to measure themselves by but Dulham people and things. The elm-trees were growing yet, and many of the ladies of the First Parish were older than they, and called them, with pleasant familiarity, the Dobin girls. These elderly persons seemed really to be growing old, and Miss Lucinda frequently lamented the change in society; she thought it a freak of nature and too sudden blighting of earthly hopes that several charming old friends of her mother’s were no longer living. They were advanced in age when Miss Lucinda was a young girl, though time and space are but relative, after all.

Their influence upon society would have 72made a great difference in many ways. Certainly, the new parishioners, who had often enough been instructed to pronounce their pastor’s name as if it were spelled with one “b,” would not have boldly returned again and again to their obnoxious habit of saying Dobbin. Miss Lucinda might carefully speak to the neighbor and new-comers of “my sister, Miss Do-bin;” only the select company of intimates followed her lead, and at last there was something humiliating about it, even though many persons spoke of them only as “the ladies.”

“The name was originally D’Aubigne, we think,” Miss Lucinda would say coldly and patiently, as if she had already explained this foolish mistake a thousand times too often. It was like the sorrows in many a provincial château in the Reign of Terror. The ladies looked on with increasing dismay at the retrogression in society. They felt as if they were a feeble garrison, to whose lot it had fallen to repulse a noisy, irreverent mob, an increasing band of marauders who would overthrow all landmarks of the past, all etiquette and social rank. The new minister himself was a round-faced, unspiritual-looking young man, whom 73they would have instinctively ignored if he had not been a minister. The new people who came to Dulham were not like the older residents, and they had no desire to be taught better. Little they cared about the Greenaples or the Hightrees; and once, when Miss Dobin essayed to speak of some detail of her mother’s brilliant experiences in Boston high life, she was interrupted, and the new-comer who sat next her at the parish sewing society began to talk about something else. We cannot believe that it could have been the tea-party at Governor Clovenfoot’s which the rude creature so disrespectfully ignored, but some persons are capable of showing any lack of good taste.

The ladies had an unusual and most painful sense of failure, as they went home together that evening. “I have always made it my object to improve and interest the people at such times; it would seem so possible to elevate their thoughts and direct them into higher channels,” said Miss Dobin sadly. “But as for that Woolden woman, there is no use in casting pearls before swine!”

Miss Lucinda murmured an indignant assent. She had a secret suspicion that the 74Woolden woman had heard the story in question oftener than had pleased her. She was but an ignorant creature; though she had lived in Dulham twelve or thirteen years, she was no better than when she came. The mistake was in treating sister Harriet as if she were on a level with the rest of the company. Miss Lucinda had observed more than once, lately, that her sister sometimes repeated herself, unconsciously, a little oftener than was agreeable. Perhaps they were getting a trifle dull; towards spring it might be well to pass a few days with some of their friends, and have a change.

“If I have tried to do anything,” said Miss Dobin in an icy tone, “it has been to stand firm in my lot and place, and to hold the standard of cultivated mind and elegant manners as high as possible. You would think it had been a hundred years since our mother’s death, so completely has the effect of her good breeding and exquisite hospitality been lost sight of, here in Dulham. I could wish that our father had chosen to settle in a larger and more appreciative place. They would like to put us on the shelf, too. I can see that plainly.”

“I am sure we have our friends,” said 75Miss Lucinda anxiously, but with a choking voice. “We must not let them think we do not mean to keep up with the times, as we always have. I do feel as if perhaps—our hair”—

And the sad secret was out at last. Each of the sisters drew a long breath of relief at this beginning of a confession.

It was certain that they must take some steps to retrieve their lost ascendency. Public attention had that evening been called to their fast-disappearing locks, poor ladies; and Miss Lucinda felt the discomfort most, for she had been the inheritor of the Hightree hair, long and curly, and chestnut in color. There used to be a waviness about it, and sometimes pretty escaping curls, but these were gone long ago. Miss Dobin resembled her father, and her hair had not been luxuriant, so that she was less changed by its absence than one might suppose. The straightness and thinness had increased so gradually that neither sister had quite accepted the thought that other persons would particularly notice their altered appearance.

They had shrunk, with the reticence born of close family association, from speaking of the cause even to each other, when they 76made themselves pretty little lace and dotted muslin caps. Breakfast caps, they called them, and explained that these were universally worn in town; the young Princess of Wales originated them, or at any rate adopted them. The ladies offered no apology for keeping the breakfast caps on until bedtime, and in spite of them a forward child had just spoken, loud and shrill, an untimely question in the ears of the for once silent sewing society. “Do Miss Dobinses wear them great caps because their heads is cold?” the little beast had said; and everybody was startled and dismayed.

Miss Dobin had never shown better her good breeding and valor, the younger sister thought.

“No, little girl,” replied the stately Harriet, with a chilly smile. “I believe that our headdresses are quite in the fashion for ladies of all ages. And you must remember that it is never polite to make such personal remarks.” It was after this that Miss Dobin had been reminded of Madam Somebody’s unusual headgear at the evening entertainment in Boston. Nobody but the Woolden woman could have interrupted her under such trying circumstances.

77Miss Lucinda, however, was certain that the time had come for making some effort to replace her lost adornment. The child had told an unwelcome truth, but had paved the way for further action, and now was the time to suggest something that had slowly been taking shape in Miss Lucinda’s mind. A young grand-nephew of their mother and his bride had passed a few days with them, two or three summers before, and the sisters had been quite shocked to find that the pretty young woman wore a row of frizzes, not originally her own, over her smooth forehead. At the time, Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda had spoken severely with each other of such bad taste, but now it made a great difference that the wearer of the frizzes was not only a relative by marriage and used to good society, but also that she came from town, and might be supposed to know what was proper in the way of toilet.

“I really think, sister, that we had better see about having some—arrangements, next time we go anywhere,” Miss Dobin said unexpectedly, with a slight tremble in her voice, just as they reached their own door. “There seems to be quite a fashion for them nowadays. For the parish’s sake we ought 78to recognize”—and Miss Lucinda responded with instant satisfaction. She did not like to complain, but she had been troubled with neuralgic pains in her forehead on suddenly meeting the cold air. The sisters felt a new bond of sympathy in keeping this secret with and for each other; they took pains to say to several acquaintances that they were thinking of going to the next large town to do a few errands for Christmas.

A bright, sunny morning seemed to wish the ladies good fortune. Old Hetty Downs, their faithful maid-servant and protector, looked after them in affectionate foreboding. “Dear sakes, what devil’s wiles may be played on them blessed innocents afore they’re safe home again?” she murmured, as they vanished round the corner of the street that led to the railway station.

Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda paced discreetly side by side down the main street of Westbury. It was nothing like Boston, of course, but the noise was slightly confusing, and the passers-by sometimes roughly pushed against them. Westbury was a consequential manufacturing town, but a great convenience at times like this. The trifling Christmas gifts for their old neighbors and 79Sunday-school scholars were purchased and stowed away in their neat Fayal basket before the serious commission of the day was attended to. Here and there, in the shops, disreputable frizzes were displayed in unblushing effrontery, but no such vulgar shopkeeper merited the patronage of the Misses Dobin. They pretended not to observe the unattractive goods, and went their way to a low, one-storied building on a side street, where an old tradesman lived. He had been useful to the minister while he still remained upon the earth and had need of a wig, sandy in hue and increasingly sprinkled with gray, as if it kept pace with other changes of existence. But old Paley’s shutters were up, and a bar of rough wood was nailed firmly across the one that had lost its fastening and would rack its feeble hinges in the wind. Old Paley had always been polite and bland; they really had looked forward to a little chat with him; they had heard a year or two before of his wife’s death, and meant to offer sympathy. His business of hair-dressing had been carried on with that of parasol and umbrella mending, and the condemned umbrella which was his sign flapped and swung in the rising 80wind, a tattered skeleton before the closed door. The ladies sighed and turned away; they were beginning to feel tired; the day was long, and they had not met with any pleasures yet. “We might walk up the street a little farther,” suggested Miss Lucinda; “that is, if you are not tired,” as they stood hesitating on the corner after they had finished a short discussion of Mr. Paley’s disappearance. Happily it was only a few minutes before they came to a stop together in front of a new, shining shop, where smirking waxen heads all in a row were decked with the latest fashions of wigs and frizzes. One smiling fragment of a gentleman stared so straight at Miss Lucinda with his black eyes that she felt quite coy and embarrassed, and was obliged to feign not to be conscious of his admiration. But Miss Dobin, after a brief delay, boldly opened the door and entered; it was better to be sheltered in the shop than exposed to public remark as they gazed in at the windows. Miss Lucinda felt her heart beat and her courage give out; she, coward like, left the transaction of their business to her sister, and turned to contemplate the back of the handsome model. It was a slight shock to find that he was not so 81attractive from this point of view. The wig he wore was well made all round, but his shoulders were roughly finished in a substance that looked like plain plaster of Paris.

“What can I have ze pleasure of showing you, young ladees?” asked a person who advanced; and Miss Lucinda faced about to discover a smiling, middle-aged Frenchman, who rubbed his hands together and looked at his customers, first one and then the other, with delightful deference. He seemed a very civil nice person, the young ladies thought.

“My sister and I were thinking of buying some little arrangements to wear above the forehead.” Miss Dobin explained, with pathetic dignity; but the Frenchman spared her any further words. He looked with eager interest at the bonnets, as if no lack had attracted his notice before. “Ah, yes. Je comprends; ze high foreheads are not now ze mode. Je prefer them, moi, yes, yes, but ze ladees must accept ze fashion; zay must now cover ze forehead with ze frizzes, ze bangs, you say. As you wis’, as you wis’!” and the tactful little man, with many shrugs and merry gestures at such girlish fancies, pulled down one box after another.

82It was a great relief to find that this was no worse, to say the least, than any other shopping, though the solemnity and secrecy of the occasion were infringed upon by the great supply of “arrangements” and the loud discussion of the color of some crimps a noisy girl was buying from a young saleswoman the other side of the shop.

Miss Dobin waved aside the wares which were being displayed for her approval. “Something—more simple, if you please,”—she did not like to say “older.”

“But these are très simple,” protested the Frenchman. “We have nothing younger;” and Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda blushed, and said no more. The Frenchman had his own way; he persuaded them that nothing was so suitable as some conspicuous forelocks that matched their hair as it used to be. They would have given anything rather than leave their breakfast caps at home, if they had known that their proper winter bonnets must come off. They hardly listened to the wig merchant’s glib voice as Miss Dobin stood revealed before the merciless mirror at the back of the shop.

He made everything as easy as possible, the friendly creature, and the ladies were 83grateful to him. Besides, now that the bonnet was on again there was a great improvement in Miss Dobin’s appearance. She turned to Miss Lucinda, and saw a gleam of delight in her eager countenance. “It really is very becoming. I like the way it parts over your forehead,” said the younger sister, “but if it were long enough to go behind the ears”—“Non, non,” entreated the Frenchman. “To make her the old woman at once would be cruelty!” And Lucinda, who was wondering how well she would look in her turn, succumbed promptly to such protestations. Yes, there was no use in being old before their time. Dulham was not quite keeping pace with the rest of the world in these days, but they need not drag behind everybody else, just because they lived there.

The price of the little arrangements was much less than the sisters expected, and the uncomfortable expense of their reverend father’s wigs had been, it was proved, a thing of the past. Miss Dobin treated her polite Frenchman with great courtesy; indeed, Miss Lucinda had more than once whispered to her to talk French, and as they were bowed out of the shop the gracious Bongsure 84of the elder lady seemed to act like the string of a showerbath, and bring down an awesome torrent of foreign phrases upon the two guileless heads. It was impossible to reply; the ladies bowed again, however, and Miss Lucinda caught a last smile from the handsome wax countenance in the window. He appeared to regard her with fresh approval, and she departed down the street with mincing steps.

“I feel as if anybody might look at me now, sister,” said gentle Miss Lucinda. “I confess, I have really suffered sometimes, since I knew I looked so distressed.”

“Yours is lighter than I thought it was in the shop,” remarked Miss Dobin doubtfully, but she quickly added that perhaps it would change a little. She was so perfectly satisfied with her own appearance that she could not bear to dim the pleasure of any one else. The truth remained that she never would have let Lucinda choose that particular arrangement if she had seen it first in a good light. And Lucinda was thinking exactly the same of her companion.

“I am sure we shall have no more neuralgia,” said Miss Dobin. “I am sorry we waited so long, dear,” and they tripped down 85the main street of Westbury, confident that nobody would suspect them of being over thirty. Indeed, they felt quite girlish, and unconsciously looked sideways as they went along, to see their satisfying reflections in the windows. The great panes made excellent mirrors, with not too clear or lasting pictures of these comforted passers-by.

The Frenchman in the shop was making merry with his assistants. The two great frisettes had long been out of fashion; he had been lying in wait with them for two unsuspecting country ladies, who could be cajoled into such a purchase.

“Sister,” Miss Lucinda was saying, “you know there is still an hour to wait before our train goes. Suppose we take a little longer walk down the other side of the way;” and they strolled slowly back again. In fact, they nearly missed the train, naughty girls! Hetty would have been so worried, they assured each other, but they reached the station just in time.

“Lutie,” said Miss Dobin, “put up your hand and part it from your forehead; it seems to be getting a little out of place;” and Miss Lucinda, who had just got breath enough to speak, returned the information 86that Miss Dobin’s was almost covering her eyebrows. They might have to trim them a little shorter; of course it could be done. The darkness was falling; they had taken an early dinner before they started, and now they were tired and hungry after the exertion of the afternoon, but the spirit of youth flamed afresh in their hearts, and they were very happy. If one’s heart remains young, it is a sore trial to have the outward appearance entirely at variance. It was the ladies’ nature to be girlish, and they found it impossible not to be grateful to the flimsy, ineffectual disguise which seemed to set them right with the world. The old conductor, who had known them for many years, looked hard at them as he took their tickets, and, being a man of humor and compassion, affected not to notice anything remarkable in their appearance. “You ladies never mean to grow old, like the rest of us,” he said gallantly, and the sisters fairly quaked with joy. Their young hearts would forever keep them truly unconscious of the cruel thievery of time.

“Bless us!” the obnoxious Mrs. Woolden was saying, at the other end of the car. “There’s the old maid Dobbinses, and 87they’ve bought ’em some bangs. I expect they wanted to get thatched in a little before real cold weather; but don’t they look just like a pair o’ poodle dogs.”

The little ladies descended wearily from the train. Somehow they did not enjoy a day’s shopping as much as they used. They were certainly much obliged to Hetty for sending her niece’s boy to meet them, with a lantern; also for having a good warm supper ready when they came in. Hetty took a quick look at her mistresses, and returned to the kitchen. “I knew somebody would be foolin’ of ’em,” she assured herself angrily, but she had to laugh. Their dear, kind faces were wrinkled and pale, and the great frizzes had lost their pretty curliness, and were hanging down, almost straight and very ugly, into the ladies’ eyes. They could not tuck them up under their caps, as they were sure might be done.

Then came a succession of rainy days, and nobody visited the rejuvenated household. The frisettes looked very bright chestnut by the light of day, and it must be confessed that Miss Dobin took the scissors and shortened Miss Lucinda’s half an inch, and Miss Lucinda returned the compliment 88quite secretly, because each thought her sister’s forehead lower than her own. Their dear gray eyebrows were honestly displayed, as if it were the fashion not to have them match with wigs. Hetty at last spoke out, and begged her mistresses, as they sat at breakfast, to let her take the frizzes back and change them. Her sister’s daughter worked in that very shop, and though in the workroom, would be able to oblige them, Hetty was sure.

But the ladies looked at each other in pleased assurance, and then turned together to look at Hetty, who stood already a little apprehensive near the table, where she had just put down a plateful of smoking drop-cakes. The good creature really began to look old.

“They are worn very much in town,” said Miss Dobin. “We think it was quite fortunate that the fashion came in just as our hair was growing a trifle thin. I dare say we may choose those that are a shade duller in color when these are a little past. Oh, we shall not want tea this evening, you remember, Hetty. I am glad there is likely to be such a good night for the sewing circle.” And Miss Dobin and Miss Lucinda nodded and smiled.

89“Oh, my sakes alive!” the troubled handmaiden groaned. “Going to the circle, be they, to be snickered at! Well, the Dobbin girls they was born, and the Dobbin girls they will remain till they die; but if they ain’t innocent Christian babes to those that knows ’em well, mark me down for an idjit myself! They believe them front-pieces has set the clock back forty year or more, but if they’re pleased to think so, let ’em!”

Away paced the Dulham ladies, late in the afternoon, to grace the parish occasion, and face the amused scrutiny of their neighbors. “I think we owe it to society to observe the fashions of the day,” said Miss Lucinda. “A lady cannot afford to be unattractive. I feel now as if we were prepared for anything!”

GOING TO SHREWSBURY.

The train stopped at a way station with apparent unwillingness, and there was barely time for one elderly passenger to be hurried on board before a sudden jerk threw her almost off her unsteady old feet and we moved on. At my first glance I saw only a perturbed old countrywoman, laden with a large basket and a heavy bundle tied up in an old-fashioned bundle-handkerchief; then I discovered that she was a friend of mine, Mrs. Peet, who lived on a small farm, several miles from the village. She used to be renowned for good butter and fresh eggs and the earliest cowslip greens; in fact, she always made the most of her farm’s slender resources; but it was some time since I had seen her drive by from market in her ancient thorough-braced wagon.

The brakeman followed her into the crowded car, also carrying a number of packages. I leaned forward and asked Mrs. Peet to sit by me; it was a great pleasure to see 91her again. The brakeman seemed relieved, and smiled as he tried to put part of his burden into the rack overhead; but even the flowered carpet-bag was much too large, and he explained that he would take care of everything at the end of the car. Mrs. Peet was not large herself, but with the big basket, and the bundle-handkerchief, and some possessions of my own we had very little spare room.

“So this ‘ere is what you call ridin’ in the cars! Well, I do declare!” said my friend, as soon as she had recovered herself a little. She looked pale and as if she had been in tears, but there was the familiar gleam of good humor in her tired old eyes.

“Where in the world are you going, Mrs. Peet?” I asked.

“Can’t be you ain’t heared about me, dear?” said she. “Well, the world’s bigger than I used to think ’t was. I’ve broke up,—’twas the only thing to do,—and I’m a-movin’ to Shrewsbury.”

“To Shrewsbury? Have you sold the farm?” I exclaimed, with sorrow and surprise. Mrs. Peet was too old and too characteristic to be suddenly transplanted from her native soil.

92“’Twa’n’t mine, the place wa’n’t.” Her pleasant face hardened slightly. “He was coaxed an’ over-persuaded into signin’ off before he was taken away. Is’iah, son of his sister that married old Josh Peet, come it over him about his bein’ past work and how he’d do for him like an own son, an’ we owed him a little somethin’. I’d paid off everythin’ but that, an’ was fool enough to leave it till the last, on account o’ Is’iah’s bein’ a relation and not needin’ his pay much as some others did. It’s hurt me to have the place fall into other hands. Some wanted me to go right to law; but ’twouldn’t be no use. Is’iah’s smarter ’n I be about them matters. You see he’s got my name on the paper, too; he said ’twas somethin’ ’bout bein’ responsible for the taxes. We was scant o’ money, an’ I was wore out with watchin’ an’ being broke o’ my rest. After my tryin’ hard for risin’ forty-five year to provide for bein’ past work, here I be, dear, here I be! I used to drive things smart, you remember. But we was fools enough in ’72 to put about everythin’ we had safe in the bank into that spool factory that come to nothin’. But I tell ye I could ha’ kept myself long’s I lived, if I could ha’ held the 93place. I’d parted with most o’ the woodland, if Is’iah’d coveted it. He was welcome to that, ’cept what might keep me in oven-wood. I’ve always desired to travel an’ see somethin’ o’ the world, but I’ve got the chance now when I don’t value it no great.”

“Shrewsbury is a busy, pleasant place,” I ventured to say by way of comfort, though my heart was filled with rage at the trickery of Isaiah Peet, who had always looked like a fox and behaved like one.

“Shrewsbury’s be’n held up consid’able for me to smile at,” said the poor old soul, “but I tell ye, dear, it’s hard to go an’ live twenty-two miles from where you’ve always had your home and friends. It may divert me, but it won’t be home. You might as well set out one o’ my old apple-trees on the beach, so ’t could see the waves come in,—there wouldn’t be no please to it.”

“Where are you going to live in Shrewsbury?” I asked presently.

“I don’t expect to stop long, dear creatur’. I’m ’most seventy-six year old,” and Mrs. Peet turned to look at me with pathetic amusement in her honest wrinkled face. “I said right out to Is’iah, before a roomful o’ the neighbors, that I expected it of him to 94git me home an’ bury me when my time come, and do it respectable; but I wanted to airn my livin’, if ’twas so I could, till then. He’d made sly talk, you see, about my electin’ to leave the farm and go ’long some o’ my own folks; but”—and she whispered this carefully—“he didn’t give me no chance to stay there without hurtin’ my pride and dependin’ on him. I ain’t said that to many folks, but all must have suspected. A good sight on ’em’s had money of Is’iah, though, and they don’t like to do nothin’ but take his part an’ be pretty soft spoken, fear it’ll git to his ears. Well, well, dear, we’ll let it be bygones, and not think of it no more;” but I saw the great tears roll slowly down her cheeks, and she pulled her bonnet forward impatiently, and looked the other way.

“There looks to be plenty o’ good farmin’ land in this part o’ the country,” she said, a minute later. “Where be we now? See them handsome farm buildin’s; he must be a well-off man.” But I had to tell my companion that we were still within the borders of the old town where we had both been born. Mrs. Peet gave a pleased little laugh, like a girl. “I’m expectin’ Shrewsbury to 95pop up any minute. I’m feared to be kerried right by. I wa’n’t never aboard of the cars before, but I’ve so often thought about em’ I don’t know but it seems natural. Ain’t it jest like flyin’ through the air? I can’t catch holt to see nothin’. Land! and here’s my old cat goin’ too, and never mistrustin’. I ain’t told you that I’d fetched her.”

“Is she in that basket?” I inquired with interest.

“Yis, dear. Truth was, I calc’lated to have her put out o’ the misery o’ movin’, an spoke to one o’ the Barnes boys, an’ he promised me all fair; but he wa’n’t there in season, an’ I kind o’ made excuse to myself to fetch her along. She’s an’ old creatur’, like me, an’ I can make shift to keep her some way or ’nuther; there’s probably mice where we’re goin’, an’ she’s a proper mouser that can about keep herself if there’s any sort o’ chance. ’Twill be somethin’ o’ home to see her goin’ an’ comin’, but I expect we’re both on us goin’ to miss our old haunts. I’d love to know what kind o’ mousin’ there’s goin’ to be for me.”

“You mustn’t worry,” I answered, with all the bravery and assurance that I could 96muster. “Your niece will be thankful to have you with her. Is she one of Mrs. Winn’s daughters?”

“Oh, no, they ain’t able; it’s Sister Wayland’s darter Isabella, that married the overseer of the gre’t carriage-shop. I ain’t seen her since just after she was married; but I turned to her first because I knew she was best able to have me, and then I can see just how the other girls is situated and make me some kind of a plot. I wrote to Isabella, though she is ambitious, and said ’twas so I’d got to ask to come an’ make her a visit, an’ she wrote back she would be glad to have me; but she didn’t write right off, and her letter was scented up dreadful strong with some sort o’ essence, and I don’t feel heartened about no great of a welcome. But there, I’ve got eyes, an’ I can see how ’tis when I git where ’tis. Sister Winn’s gals ain’t married, an’ they’ve always boarded, an’ worked in the shop on trimmin’s. Isabella’s well off; she had some means from her father’s sister. I thought it all over by night an’ day, an’ I recalled that our folks kept Sister Wayland’s folks all one winter, when he’d failed up and got into trouble. I’m reckonin’ on sendin’ over to-night an’ 97gittin’ the Winn gals to come and see me and advise. Perhaps some on ’em may know of somebody that’ll take me for what help I can give about house, or some clever folks that have been lookin’ for a smart cat, any ways; no, I don’t know’s I could let her go to strangers.

“There was two or three o’ the folks round home that acted real warm-hearted towards me, an’ urged me to come an’ winter with ’em,” continued the exile; “an’ this mornin’ I wished I’d agreed to, ’twas so hard to break away. But now it’s done I feel more ’n ever it’s best. I couldn’t bear to live right in sight o’ the old place, and come spring I shouldn’t ‘prove of nothing Is’iah ondertakes to do with the land. Oh, dear sakes! now it comes hard with me not to have had no child’n. When I was young an’ workin’ hard and into everything, I felt kind of free an’ superior to them that was so blessed, an’ their houses cluttered up from mornin’ till night, but I tell ye it comes home to me now. I’d be most willin’ to own to even Is’iah, mean ’s he is; but I tell ye I’d took it out of him ‘fore he was a grown man, if there’d be’n any virtue in cow-hidin’ of him. Folks don’t look like 98wild creatur’s for nothin’. Is’iah’s got fox blood in him, an’ p’r’haps ’tis his misfortune. His own mother always favored the looks of an old fox, true ’s the world; she was a poor tool,—a poor tool! I d’know ’s we ought to blame him same ’s we do.

“I’ve always been a master proud woman, if I was riz among the pastures,” Mrs. Peet added, half to herself. There was no use in saying much to her; she was conscious of little beside her own thoughts and the smouldering excitement caused by this great crisis in her simple existence. Yet the atmosphere of her loneliness, uncertainty, and sorrow was so touching that after scolding again at her nephew’s treachery, and finding the tears come fast to my eyes as she talked, I looked intently out of the car window, and tried to think what could be done for the poor soul. She was one of the old-time people, and I hated to have her go away; but even if she could keep her home she would soon be too feeble to live there alone, and some definite plan must be made for her comfort. Farms in that neighborhood were not valuable. Perhaps through the agency of the law and quite in secret, Isaiah Peet could be forced to give up his unrighteous 99claim. Perhaps, too, the Winn girls, who were really no longer young, might have saved something, and would come home again. But it was easy to make such pictures in one’s mind, and I must do what I could through other people, for I was just leaving home for a long time. I wondered sadly about Mrs. Peet’s future, and the ambitious Isabella, and the favorite Sister Winn’s daughters, to whom, with all their kindliness of heart, the care of so old and perhaps so dependent an aunt might seem impossible. The truth about life in Shrewsbury would soon be known; more than half the short journey was already past.

To my great pleasure, my fellow-traveler now began to forget her own troubles in looking about her. She was an alert, quickly interested old soul, and this was a bit of neutral ground between the farm and Shrewsbury, where she was unattached and irresponsible. She had lived through the last tragic moments of her old life, and felt a certain relief, and Shrewsbury might be as far away as the other side of the Rocky Mountains for all the consciousness she had of its real existence. She was simply a traveler for the time being, and began to comment, 100with delicious phrases and shrewd understanding of human nature, on two or three persons near us who attracted her attention.

“Where do you s’pose they be all goin’?” she asked contemptuously. “There ain’t none on ’em but what looks kind o’ respectable. I’ll warrant they’ve left work to home they’d ought to be doin’. I knowed, if ever I stopped to think, that cars was hived full o’ folks, an’ wa’n’t run to an’ fro for nothin’; but these can’t be quite up to the average, be they? Some on ’em’s real thrif’less? guess they’ve be’n shoved out o’ the last place, an’ goin’ to try the next one,—like me, I suppose you’ll want to say! Jest see that flauntin’ old creatur’ that looks like a stopped clock. There! everybody can’t be o’ one goodness, even preachers.”

I was glad to have Mrs. Peet amused, and we were as cheerful as we could be for a few minutes. She said earnestly that she hoped to be forgiven for such talk, but there were some kinds of folks in the cars that she never had seen before. But when the conductor came to take her ticket she relapsed into her first state of mind, and was at a loss.

101“You’ll have to look after me, dear, when we get to Shrewsbury,” she said, after we had spent some distracted moments in hunting for the ticket, and the cat had almost escaped from the basket, and the bundle-handkerchief had become untied and all its miscellaneous contents scattered about our laps and the floor. It was a touching collection of the last odds and ends of Mrs. Peet’s housekeeping: some battered books, and singed holders for flatirons, and the faded little shoulder shawl that I had seen her wear many a day about her bent shoulders. There were her old tin match-box spilling all its matches, and a goose-wing for brushing up ashes, and her much-thumbed Leavitt’s Almanac. It was most pathetic to see these poor trifles out of their places. At last the ticket was found in her left-hand woolen glove, where her stiff, work-worn hand had grown used to the feeling of it.

“I shouldn’t wonder, now, if I come to like living over to Shrewsbury first-rate,” she insisted, turning to me with a hopeful, eager look to see if I differed. “You see ’twon’t be so tough for me as if I hadn’t always felt it lurking within me to go off some day or ’nother an’ see how other folks 102did things. I do’ know but what the Winn gals have laid up somethin’ sufficient for us to take a house, with the little mite I’ve got by me. I might keep house for us all, ’stead o’ boardin’ round in other folks’ houses. That I ain’t never been demeaned to, but I dare say I should find it pleasant in some ways. Town folks has got the upper hand o’ country folks, but with all their work an’ pride they can’t make a dandelion. I do’ know the times when I’ve set out to wash Monday mornin’s, an’ tied out the line betwixt the old pucker-pear tree and the corner o’ the barn, an’ thought, ‘Here I be with the same kind o’ week’s work right over again.’ I’d wonder kind o’ f’erce if I couldn’t git out of it noways; an’ now here I be out of it, and an uprooteder creatur’ never stood on the airth. Just as I got to feel I had somethin’ ahead come that spool-factory business. There! you know he never was a forehanded man; his health was slim, and he got discouraged pretty nigh before ever he begun. I hope he don’t know I’m turned out o’ the old place. ‘Is’iah’s well off; he’ll do the right thing by ye,’ says he. But my! I turned hot all over when I found out what I’d put my name to,—me that had always 103be’n counted a smart woman! I did undertake to read it over, but I couldn’t sense it. I’ve told all the folks so when they laid it off on to me some: but hand-writin’ is awful tedious readin’ and my head felt that day as if the works was gone.

“I ain’t goin’ to sag on to nobody,” she assured me eagerly, as the train rushed along. “I’ve got more work in me now than folks expects at my age. I may be consid’able use to Isabella. She’s got a family, an’ I’ll take right holt in the kitchen or with the little gals. She had four on ’em, last I heared. Isabella was never one that liked housework. Little gals! I do’ know now but what they must be about grown, time doos slip away so. I expect I shall look outlandish to ’em. But there! everybody knows me to home, an’ nobody knows me to Shrewsbury; ’twon’t make a mite o’ difference, if I take holt willin’.”

I hoped, as I looked at Mrs. Peet, that she would never be persuaded to cast off the gathered brown silk bonnet and the plain shawl that she had worn so many years; but Isabella might think it best to insist upon more modern fashions. Mrs. Peet suggested, as if it were a matter of little consequence, 104that she had kept it in mind to buy some mourning; but there were other things to be thought of first, and so she had let it go until winter, any way, or until she should be fairly settled in Shrewsbury.

“Are your nieces expecting you by this train?” I was moved to ask, though with all the good soul’s ready talk and appealing manner I could hardly believe that she was going to Shrewsbury for more than a visit; it seemed as if she must return to the worn old farmhouse over by the sheep-lands. She answered that one of the Barnes boys had written a letter for her the day before, and there was evidently little uneasiness about her first reception.

We drew near the junction where I must leave her within a mile of the town. The cat was clawing indignantly at the basket, and her mistress grew as impatient of the car. She began to look very old and pale, my poor fellow-traveler, and said that she felt dizzy, going so fast. Presently the friendly red-cheeked young brakeman came along, bringing the carpet-bag and other possessions, and insisted upon taking the alarmed cat beside, in spite of an aggressive paw that had worked its way through the 105wicker prison. Mrs. Peet watched her goods disappear with suspicions eyes, and clutched her bundle-handkerchief as if it might be all that she could save. Then she anxiously got to her feet, much too soon, and when I said good-by to her at the car door she was ready to cry. I pointed to the car which she was to take next on the branch line of railway, and I assured her that it was only a few minutes’ ride to Shrewsbury, and that I felt certain she would find somebody waiting. The sight of that worn, thin figure adventuring alone across the platform gave my heart a sharp pang as the train carried me away.

Some of the passengers who sat near asked me about my old friend with great sympathy, after she had gone. There was a look of tragedy about her, and indeed it had been impossible not to get a good deal of her history, as she talked straight on in the same tone, when we stopped at a station, as if the train were going at full speed, and some of her remarks caused pity and amusements by turns. At the last minute she said, with deep self-reproach, “Why, I haven’t asked a word about your folks; but you’d ought to excuse such an old stray hen as I be.”

106In the spring I was driving by on what the old people of my native town call the sheep-lands road, and the sight of Mrs. Peet’s former home brought our former journey freshly to my mind. I had last heard from her just after she got to Shrewsbury, when she had sent me a message.

“Have you ever heard how she got on?” I eagerly asked my companion.

“Didn’t I tell you that I met her in Shrewsbury High Street one day?” I was answered. “She seemed perfectly delighted with everything. Her nieces have laid up a good bit of money, and are soon to leave the mill, and most thankful to have old Mrs. Peet with them. Somebody told me that they wished to buy the farm here, and come back to live, but she wouldn’t hear of it, and thought they would miss too many privileges. She has been going to concerts and lectures this winter, and insists that Isaiah did her a good turn.”

We both laughed. My own heart was filled with joy, for the uncertain, lonely face of this homeless old woman had often haunted me. The rain-blackened little house did certainly look dreary, and a whole lifetime of patient toil had left few traces. The 107pucker-pear tree was in full bloom, However, and gave a welcome gayety to the deserted dooryard.

A little way beyond we met Isaiah Peet, the prosperous money-lender, who had cheated the old woman of her own. I fancied that he looked somewhat ashamed, as he recognized us. To my surprise, he stopped his horse in most social fashion.

“Old Aunt Peet’s passed away,” he informed me briskly. “She had a shock, and went right off sudden yisterday forenoon. I’m about now tendin’ to the funeral ‘rangements. She’s be’n extry smart, they say, all winter,—out to meetin’ last Sabbath; never enjoyed herself so complete as she has this past month. She’d be’n a very hard-workin’ woman. Her folks was glad to have her there, and give her every attention. The place here never was good for nothin’. The old gen’leman,—uncle, you know,—he wore hisself out tryin’ to make a livin’ off from it.”

There was an ostentatious sympathy and half-suppressed excitement from bad news which were quite lost upon us, and we did not linger to hear much more. It seemed to me as if I had known Mrs. Peet better 108than any one else had known her. I had counted upon seeing her again, and hearing her own account of Shrewsbury life, its pleasures and its limitations. I wondered what had become of the cat and the contents of the faded bundle-handkerchief.

THE ONLY ROSE. — I. — II.

Just where the village abruptly ended, and the green mowing fields began, stood Mrs. Bickford’s house, looking down the road with all its windows, and topped by two prim chimneys that stood up like ears. It was placed with an end to the road, and fronted southward; you could follow a straight path from the gate past the front door and find Mrs. Bickford sitting by the last window of all in the kitchen, unless she were solemnly stepping about, prolonging the stern duties of her solitary housekeeping.

One day in early summer, when almost every one else in Fairfield had put her house plants out of doors, there were still three flower pots on a kitchen window-sill. Mrs. Bickford spent but little time over her rose and geranium and Jerusalem cherry-tree, although they had gained a kind of personality born of long association. They rarely undertook to bloom, but had most courageously 110maintained life in spite of their owner’s unsympathetic but conscientious care. Later in the season she would carry them out of doors, and leave them, until the time of frosts, under the shade of a great apple-tree, where they might make the best of what the summer had to give.

The afternoon sun was pouring in, the Jerusalem cherry-tree drooped its leaves in the heat and looked pale, when a neighbor, Miss Pendexter, came in from the next house but one to make a friendly call. As she passed the parlor with its shut blinds, and the sitting-room, also shaded carefully from the light, she wished, as she had done many times before, that somebody beside the owner might have the pleasure of living in and using so good and pleasant a house. Mrs. Bickford always complained of having so much care, even while she valued herself intelligently upon having the right to do as she pleased with one of the best houses in Fairfield. Miss Pendexter was a cheerful, even gay little person, who always brought a pleasant flurry of excitement, and usually had a genuine though small piece of news to tell, or some new aspect of already received information.

111Mrs. Bickford smiled as she looked up to see this sprightly neighbor coming. She had no gift at entertaining herself, and was always glad, as one might say, to be taken off her own hands.

Miss Pendexter smiled back, as if she felt herself to be equal to the occasion.

“How be you to-day?” the guest asked kindly, as she entered the kitchen. “Why, what a sight o’ flowers, Mis’ Bickford! What be you goin’ to do with ’em all?”

Mrs. Bickford wore a grave expression as she glanced over her spectacles. “My sister’s boy fetched ’em over,” she answered. “You know my sister Parsons’s a great hand to raise flowers, an’ this boy takes after her. He said his mother thought the gardin never looked handsomer, and she picked me these to send over. They was sendin’ a team to Westbury for some fertilizer to put on the land, an’ he come with the men, an’ stopped to eat his dinner ’long o’ me. He’s been growin’ fast, and looks peakëd. I expect sister ’Liza thought the ride, this pleasant day, would do him good. ’Liza sent word for me to come over and pass some days next week, but it ain’t so that I can.”

“Why, it ’s a pretty time of year to go 112off and make a little visit,” suggested the neighbor encouragingly.

“I ain’t got my sitting-room chamber carpet taken up yet,” sighed Mrs. Bickford. “I do feel condemned. I might have done it to-day, but ’twas all at end when I saw Tommy coming. There, he’s a likely boy, an’ so relished his dinner; I happened to be well prepared. I don’t know but he’s my favorite o’ that family. Only I’ve been sittin’ here thinkin’, since he went, an’ I can’t remember that I ever was so belated with my spring cleaning.”

“’Twas owin’ to the weather,” explained Miss Pendexter. “None of us could be so smart as common this year, not even the lazy ones that always get one room done the first o’ March, and brag of it to others’ shame, and then never let on when they do the rest.”

The two women laughed together cheerfully. Mrs. Bickford had put up the wide leaf of her large table between the windows and spread out the flowers. She was sorting them slowly into three heaps.

“Why, I do declare if you haven’t got a rose in bloom yourself!” exclaimed Miss Pendexter abruptly, as if the bud had not been announced weeks before, and its progress 113regularly commented upon. “Ain’t it a lovely rose? Why, Mis’ Bickford!”

“Yes’m, it’s out to-day,” said Mrs. Bickford, with a somewhat plaintive air. “I’m glad you come in so as to see it.”

The bright flower was like a face. Somehow, the beauty and life of it were surprising in the plain room, like a gay little child who might suddenly appear in a doorway. Miss Pendexter forgot herself and her hostess and the tangled mass of garden flowers in looking at the red rose. She even forgot that it was incumbent upon her to carry forward the conversation. Mrs. Bickford was subject to fits of untimely silence which made her friends anxiously sweep the corners of their minds in search of something to say, but any one who looked at her now could easily see that it was not poverty of thought that made her speechless, but an overburdening sense of the inexpressible.

“Goin’ to make up all your flowers into bo’quets? I think the short-stemmed kinds is often pretty in a dish,” suggested Miss Pendexter compassionately.

“I thought I should make them into three bo’quets. I wish there wa’n’t quite so many. Sister Eliza’s very lavish with her flowers; 114she’s always been a kind sister, too,” said Mrs. Bickford vaguely. She was not apt to speak with so much sentiment, and as her neighbor looked at her narrowly she detected unusual signs of emotion. It suddenly became evident that the three nosegays were connected in her mind with her bereavement of three husbands, and Miss Pendexter’s easily roused curiosity was quieted by the discovery that her friend was bent upon a visit to the burying-ground. It was the time of year when she was pretty sure to spend an afternoon there, and sometimes they had taken the walk in company. Miss Pendexter expected to receive the usual invitation, but there was nothing further said at the moment, and she looked again at the pretty rose.

Mrs. Bickford aimlessly handled the syringas and flowering almond sprays, choosing them out of the fragrant heap only to lay them down again. She glanced out of the window; then gave Miss Pendexter a long expressive look.

“I expect you’re going to carry ’em over to the burying-ground?” inquired the guest, in a sympathetic tone.

“Yes’m,” said the hostess, now well 115started in conversation and in quite her every-day manner. “You see I was goin’ over to my brother’s folks to-morrow in South Fairfield, to pass the day; they said they were goin’ to send over to-morrow to leave a wagon at the blacksmith’s, and they’d hitch that to their best chaise, so I could ride back very comfortable. You know I have to avoid bein’ out in the mornin’ sun?”

Miss Pendexter smiled to herself at this moment; she was obliged to move from her chair at the window, the May sun was so hot on her back, for Mrs. Bickford always kept the curtains rolled high up, out of the way, for fear of fading and dust. The kitchen was a blaze of light. As for the Sunday chaise being sent, it was well known that Mrs. Bickford’s married brothers and sisters comprehended the truth that she was a woman of property, and had neither chick nor child.

“So I thought ’twas a good opportunity to just stop an’ see if the lot was in good order,—last spring Mr. Wallis’s stone hove with the frost; an’ so I could take these flowers.” She gave a sigh. “I ain’t one that can bear flowers in a close room,—they 116bring on a headache; but I enjoy ’em as much as anybody to look at, only you never know what to put ’em in. If I could be out in the mornin’ sun, as some do, and keep flowers in the house, I should have me a gardin, certain,” and she sighed again.

“A garden’s a sight o’ care, but I don’t begrudge none o’ the care I give to mine. I have to scant on flowers so ’s to make room for pole beans,” said Miss Pendexter gayly. She had only a tiny strip of land behind her house, but she always had something to give away, and made riches out of her narrow poverty. “A few flowers gives me just as much pleasure as more would,” she added. “You get acquainted with things when you’ve only got one or two roots. My sweet-williams is just like folks.”

“Mr. Bickford was partial to sweet-williams,” said Mrs. Bickford. “I never knew him to take notice of no other sort of flowers. When we’d be over to Eliza’s, he’d walk down her gardin, an’ he’d never make no comments until he come to them, and then he’d say, ‘Those is sweet-williams.’ How many times I’ve heard him!”

“You ought to have a sprig of ’em for his bo’quet,” suggested Miss Pendexter.

117“Yes, I’ve put a sprig in,” said her companion.

At this moment Miss Pendexter took a good look at the bouquets, and found that they were as nearly alike as careful hands could make them. Mrs. Bickford was evidently trying to reach absolute impartiality.

“I don’t know but you think it’s foolish to tie ’em up this afternoon,” she said presently, as she wound the first with a stout string. “I thought I could put ’em in a bucket o’ water out in the shed, where there’s a draught o’ air, and then I should have all my time in the morning. I shall have a good deal to do before I go. I always sweep the setting-room and front entry Wednesdays. I want to leave everything nice, goin’ away for all day so. So I meant to get the flowers out o’ the way this afternoon. Why, it’s most half past four, ain’t it? But I sha’n’t pick the rose till mornin’; ’twill be blowed out better then.”

“The rose?” questioned Miss Pendexter. “Why, are you goin’ to pick that, too?”

“Yes, I be. I never like to let ’em fade on the bush. There, that’s just what’s a-troublin’ me,” and she turned to give a long, imploring look at the friend who sat 118beside her. Miss Pendexter had moved her chair before the table in order to be out of the way of the sun. “I don’t seem to know which of ’em ought to have it,” said Mrs. Bickford despondently. “I do so hate to make a choice between ’em; they all had their good points, especially Mr. Bickford, and I respected ’em all. I don’t know but what I think of one on ’em ’most as much as I do of the other.”

“Why, ’tis difficult for you, ain’t it?” responded Miss Pendexter. “I don’t know ’s I can offer advice.”

“No, I s’pose not,” answered her friend slowly, with a shadow of disappointment coming over her calm face. “I feel sure you would if you could, Abby.”

Both of the women felt as if they were powerless before a great emergency.

“There’s one thing,—they’re all in a better world now,” said Miss Pendexter, in a self-conscious and constrained voice; “they can’t feel such little things or take note o’ slights same ’s we can.”

“No; I suppose ’tis myself that wants to be just,” answered Mrs. Bickford. “I feel under obligations to my last husband when I look about and see how comfortable he left 119me. Poor Mr. Wallis had his great projects, an’ perhaps if he’d lived longer he’d have made a record; but when he died he’d failed all up, owing to that patent cornsheller he’d put everything into, and, as you know, I had to get along ’most any way I could for the next few years. Life was very disappointing with Mr. Wallis, but he meant well, an’ used to be an amiable person to dwell with, until his temper got spoilt makin’ so many hopes an’ havin’ ’em turn out failures. He had consider’ble of an air, an’ dressed very handsome when I was first acquainted with him, Mr. Wallis did. I don’t know ’s you ever knew Mr. Wallis in his prime?”

“He died the year I moved over here from North Denfield,” said Miss Pendexter, in a tone of sympathy. “I just knew him by sight. I was to his funeral. You know you lived in what we call the Wells house then, and I felt it wouldn’t be an intrusion, we was such near neighbors. The first time I ever was in your house was just before that, when he was sick, an’ Mary ’Becca Wade an’ I called to see if there was anything we could do.”

“They used to say about town that Mr. 120Wallis went to an’ fro like a mail-coach an’ brought nothin’ to pass,” announced Mrs. Bickford without bitterness. “He ought to have had a better chance than he did in this little neighborhood. You see, he had excellent ideas, but he never’d learned the machinist’s trade, and there was somethin’ the matter with every model he contrived. I used to be real narrow-minded when he talked about moving ’way up to Lowell, or some o’ them places; I hated to think of leaving my folks; and now I see that I never done right by him. His ideas was good. I know once he was on a jury, and there was a man stopping to the tavern where he was, near the court house, a man that traveled for a firm to Lowell; and they engaged in talk, an’ Mr. Wallis let out some o’ his notions an’ contrivances, an’ he said that man wouldn’t hardly stop to eat, he was so interested, an’ said he’d look for a chance for him up to Lowell. It all sounded so well that I kind of begun to think about goin’ myself. Mr. Wallis said we’d close the house here, and go an’ board through the winter. But he never heard a word from him, and the disappointment was one he never got over. I think of it now different 121from what I did then. I often used to be kind of disapproving to Mr. Wallis; but there, he used to be always tellin’ over his great projects. Somebody told me once that a man by the same name of the one he met while he was to court had got some patents for the very things Mr. Wallis used to be workin’ over; but ’twas after he died, an’ I don’t know ’s ’twas in him to ever really set things up so other folks could ha’ seen their value. His machines always used to work kind of rickety, but folks used to come from all round to see ’em; they was curiosities if they wa’n’t nothin’ else, an’ gave him a name.”

Mrs. Bickford paused a moment, with some geranium leaves in her hand, and seemed to suppress with difficulty a desire to speak even more freely.

“He was a dreadful notional man,” she said at last, regretfully, and as if this fact were a poor substitute for what had just been in her mind. “I recollect one time he worked all through the early winter over my churn, an’ got it so it would go three quarters of an hour all of itself if you wound it up; an’ if you’ll believe it, he went an’ spent all that time for nothin’ 122when the cow was dry, an’ we was with difficulty borrowin’ a pint o’ milk a day somewheres in the neighborhood just to get along with.” Mrs. Bickford flushed with displeasure, and turned to look at her visitor. “Now what do you think of such a man as that, Miss Pendexter?” she asked.

“Why, I don’t know but ’twas just as good for an invention,” answered Miss Pendexter timidly; but her friend looked doubtful, and did not appear to understand.

“Then I asked him where it was, one day that spring when I’d got tired to death churnin’, an’ the butter wouldn’t come in a churn I’d had to borrow, and he’d gone an’ took ours all to pieces to get the works to make some other useless contrivance with. He had no sort of a business turn, but he was well meanin’, Mr. Wallis was, an’ full o’ divertin’ talk; they used to call him very good company. I see now that he never had no proper chance. I’ve always regretted Mr. Wallis,” said she who was now the widow Bickford.

“I’m sure you always speak well of him,” said Miss Pendexter. “’Twas a pity he hadn’t got among good business men, who could push his inventions an’ do all the business part.”

123“I was left very poor an’ needy for them next few years,” said Mrs. Bickford mournfully; “but he never’d give up but what he should die worth his fifty thousand dollars. I don’t see now how I ever did get along them next few years without him; but there, I always managed to keep a pig, an’ sister Eliza gave me my potatoes, and I made out somehow. I could dig me a few greens, you know, in spring, and then ’twould come strawberry-time, and other berries a-follow-in’ on. I was always decent to go to meetin’ till within the last six months, an’ then I went in bad weather, when folks wouldn’t notice; but ’twas a rainy summer, an’ I managed to get considerable preachin’ after all. My clothes looked proper enough when ’twas a wet Sabbath. I often think o’ them pinched days now, when I’m left so comfortable by Mr. Bickford.”

“Yes’m, you’ve everything to be thankful for,” said Miss Pendexter, who was as poor herself at that moment as her friend had ever been, and who could never dream of venturing upon the support and companionship of a pig. “Mr. Bickford was a very personable man,” she hastened to say, the confidences were so intimate and interesting.

124“Oh, very,” replied Mrs. Bickford; “there was something about him that was very marked. Strangers would always ask who he was as he come into meetin’. His words counted; he never spoke except he had to. ’Twas a relief at first after Mr. Wallis’s being so fluent; but Mr. Wallis was splendid company for winter evenings,—’twould be eight o’clock before you knew it. I didn’t use to listen to it all, but he had a great deal of information. Mr. Bickford was dreadful dignified; I used to be sort of meechin’ with him along at the first, for fear he’d disapprove of me; but I found out ’twa’n’t no need; he was always just that way, an’ done everything by rule an’ measure. He hadn’t the mind of my other husbands, but he was a very dignified appearing man; he used ’most always to sleep in the evenin’s, Mr. Bickford did.”

“Them is lovely bo’quets, certain!” exclaimed Miss Pendexter. “Why, I couldn’t tell ’em apart; the flowers are comin’ out just right, aren’t they?”

Mrs. Bickford nodded assent, and then, startled by sudden recollection, she cast a quick glance at the rose in the window.

“I always seem to forget about your first 125husband, Mr. Fraley,” Miss Pendexter suggested bravely. “I’ve often heard you speak of him, too, but he’d passed away long before I ever knew you.”

“He was but a boy,” said Mrs. Bickford. “I thought the world was done for me when he died, but I’ve often thought since ’twas a mercy for him. He come of a very melancholy family, and all his brothers an’ sisters enjoyed poor health; it might have been his lot. Folks said we was as pretty a couple as ever come into church; we was both dark, with black eyes an’ a good deal o’ color,—you wouldn’t expect it to see me now. Albert was one that held up his head, and looked as if he meant to own the town, an’ he had a good word for everybody. I don’t know what the years might have brought.”

There was a long pause. Mrs. Bickford leaned over to pick up a heavy-headed Guelder-rose that had dropped on the floor.

“I expect ’twas what they call fallin’ in love,” she added, in a different tone; “he wa’n’t nothin’ but a boy, an’ I wa’n’t nothin’ but a girl, but we was dreadful happy. He didn’t favor his folks,—they all had hay-colored hair and was faded-looking, except 126his mother; they was alike, and looked alike, an’ set everything by each other. He was just the kind of strong, hearty young man that goes right off if they get a fever. We was just settled on a little farm, an’ he’d have done well if he’d had time; as it was, he left debts. He had a hasty temper, that was his great fault, but Albert had a lovely voice to sing; they said there wa’n’t no such tenor voice in this part o’ the State. I could hear him singin’ to himself right out in the field a-ploughin’ or hoein’, an’ he didn’t know it half o’ the time, no more ’n a common bird would. I don’t know ’s I valued his gift as I ought to, but there was nothin’ ever sounded so sweet to me. I ain’t one that ever had much fancy, but I knowed Albert had a pretty voice.”

Mrs. Bickford’s own voice trembled a little, but she held up the last bouquet and examined it critically. “I must hurry now an’ put these in water,” she said, in a matter of fact tone. Little Miss Pendexter was so quiet and sympathetic that her hostess felt no more embarrassed than if she had been talking only to herself.

“Yes, they do seem to droop some; ’tis a little warm for them here in the sun,” said 127Miss Pendexter; “but you’ll find they’ll all come up if you give them their fill o’ water. They’ll look very handsome to-morrow; folks’ll notice them from the road. You’ve arranged them very tasty, Mis’ Bickford.”

“They do look pretty, don’t they?” Mrs. Bickford regarded the three in turn. “I want to have them all pretty. You may deem it strange, Abby.”

“Why, no, Mis’ Bickford,” said the guest sincerely, although a little perplexed by the solemnity of the occasion. “I know how ’tis with friends,—that having one don’t keep you from wantin’ another; ’tis just like havin’ somethin’ to eat, and then wantin’ somethin’ to drink just the same. I expect all friends find their places.”

But Mrs. Bickford was not interested in this figure, and still looked vague and anxious as she began to brush the broken stems and wilted leaves into her wide calico apron. “I done the best I could while they was alive,” she said, “and mourned ’em when I lost ’em, an’ I feel grateful to be left so comfortable now when all is over. It seems foolish, but I’m still at a loss about that rose.”

“Perhaps you’ll feel sure when you first 128wake up in the morning,” answered Miss Pendexter solicitously. “It’s a case where I don’t deem myself qualified to offer you any advice. But I’ll say one thing, seeing ’s you’ve been so friendly spoken and confiding with me. I never was married myself, Mis’ Bickford, because it wa’n’t so that I could have the one I liked.”

“I suppose he ain’t livin’, then? Why, I wan’t never aware you had met with a disappointment, Abby,” said Mrs. Bickford instantly. None of her neighbors had ever suspected little Miss Pendexter of a romance.

“Yes’m, he’s livin’,” replied Miss Pendexter humbly. “No’m, I never have heard that he died.”

“I want to know!” exclaimed the woman of experience. “Well, I’ll tell you this, Abby: you may have regretted your lot, and felt lonesome and hardshipped, but they all have their faults, and a single woman’s got her liberty, if she ain’t got other blessin’s.”

“’Twouldn’t have been my choice to live alone,” said Abby, meeker than before. “I feel very thankful for my blessin’s, all the same. You’ve always been a kind neighbor, Mis’ Bickford.”

129“Why can’t you stop to tea?” asked the elder woman, with unusual cordiality; but Miss Pendexter remembered that her hostess often expressed a dislike for unexpected company, and promptly took her departure after she had risen to go, glancing up at the bright flower as she passed outside the window. It seemed to belong most to Albert, but she had not liked to say so. The sun was low; the green fields stretched away southward into the misty distance.

Mrs. Bickford’s house appeared to watch her out of sight down the road, the next morning. She had lost all spirit for her holiday. Perhaps it was the unusual excitement of the afternoon’s reminiscences, or it might have been simply the bright moonlight night which had kept her broad awake until dawn, thinking of the past, and more and more concerned about the rose. By this time it had ceased to be merely a flower, and had become a definite symbol and assertion of personal choice. She found it very difficult to decide. So much of her present comfort and well-being was due to Mr. Bickford; still, it was Mr. Wallis who 130had been most unfortunate, and to whom she had done least justice. If she owed recognition to Mr. Bickford, she certainly owed amends to Mr. Wallis. If she gave him the rose, it would be for the sake of affectionate apology. And then there was Albert, to whom she had no thought of being either indebted or forgiving. But she could not escape from the terrible feeling of indecision.

It was a beautiful morning for a drive, but Mrs. Bickford was kept waiting some time for the chaise. Her nephew, who was to be her escort, had found much social advantage at the blacksmith’s shop, so that it was after ten when she finally started with the three large flat-backed bouquets, covered with a newspaper to protect them from the sun. The petals of the almond flowers were beginning to scatter, and now and then little streams of water leaked out of the newspaper and trickled down the steep slope of her best dress to the bottom of the chaise. Even yet she had not made up her mind; she had stopped trying to deal with such an evasive thing as decision, and leaned back and rested as best she could.

“What an old fool I be!” she rebuked herself from time to time, in so loud a whisper 131that her companion ventured a respectful “What, ma’am?” and was astonished that she made no reply. John was a handsome young man, but Mrs. Bickford could never cease thinking of him as a boy. He had always been her favorite among the younger members of the family, and now returned this affectionate feeling, being possessed of an instinctive confidence in the sincerities of his prosaic aunt.

As they drove along, there had seemed at first to be something unsympathetic and garish about the beauty of the summer day. After the shade and shelter of the house, Mrs. Bickford suffered even more from a contracted and assailed feeling out of doors. The very trees by the roadside had a curiously fateful, trying way of standing back to watch her, as she passed in the acute agony of indecision, and she was annoyed and startled by a bird that flew too near the chaise in a moment of surprise. She was conscious of a strange reluctance to the movement of the Sunday chaise, as if she were being conveyed against her will; but the companionship of her nephew John grew every moment to be more and more a reliance. It was very comfortable to sit by his 132side, even though he had nothing to say; he was manly and cheerful, and she began to feel protected.

“Aunt Bickford,” he suddenly announced, “I may ’s well out with it! I’ve got a piece o’ news to tell you, if you won’t let on to nobody. I expect you’ll laugh, but you know I’ve set everything by Mary Lizzie Gifford ever since I was a boy. Well, sir!”

“Well, sir!” exclaimed aunt Bickford in her turn, quickly roused into most comfortable self-forgetfulness. “I am really pleased. She’ll make you a good, smart wife, John. Ain’t all the folks pleased, both sides?”

“Yes, they be,” answered John soberly, with a happy, important look that became him well.

“I guess I can make out to do something for you to help along, when the right time comes,” said aunt Bickford impulsively, after a moment’s reflection. “I’ve known what it is to be starting out in life with plenty o’ hope. You ain’t calculatin’ on gettin’ married before fall,—or be ye?”

“’Long in the fall,” said John regretfully. “I wish t’ we could set up for ourselves right away this summer. I ain’t got 133much ahead, but I can work well as anybody, an’ now I’m out o’ my time.”

“She’s a nice, modest, pretty girl. I thought she liked you, John,” said the old aunt. “I saw her over to your mother’s, last day I was there. Well, I expect you’ll be happy.”

“Certain,” said John, turning to look at her affectionately, surprised by this outspokenness and lack of embarrassment between them. “Thank you, aunt,” he said simply; “you’re a real good friend to me;” and he looked away again hastily, and blushed a fine scarlet over his sun-browned face. “She’s coming over to spend the day with the girls,” he added. “Mother thought of it. You don’t get over to see us very often.”

Mrs. Bickford smiled approvingly. John’s mother looked for her good opinion, no doubt, but it was very proper for John to have told his prospects himself, and in such a pretty way. There was no shilly-shallying about the boy.

“My gracious!” said John suddenly. “I’d like to have drove right by the burying-ground. I forgot we wanted to stop.”

Strange as it may appear, Mrs. Bickford 134herself had not noticed the burying-ground, either, in her excitement and pleasure; now she felt distressed and responsible again, and showed it in her face at once. The young man leaped lightly to the ground, and reached for the flowers.

“Here, you just let me run up with ’em,” he said kindly. “’Tis hot in the sun to-day, an’ you’ll mind it risin’ the hill. We’ll stop as I fetch you back to-night, and you can go up comfortable an’ walk the yard after sundown when it’s cool, an’ stay as long as you’re a mind to. You seem sort of tired, aunt.”

“I don’t know but what I will let you carry ’em,” said Mrs. Bickford slowly.

To leave the matter of the rose in the hands of fate seemed weakness and cowardice, but there was not a moment for consideration. John was a smiling fate, and his proposition was a great relief. She watched him go away with a terrible inward shaking, and sinking of pride. She had held the flowers with so firm a grasp that her hands felt weak and numb, and as she leaned back and shut her eyes she was afraid to open them again at first for fear of knowing the bouquets apart even at that distance, and 135giving instructions which she might regret. With a sudden impulse she called John once or twice eagerly; but her voice had a thin and piping sound, and the meditative early crickets that chirped in the fresh summer grass probably sounded louder in John’s ears. The bright light on the white stones dazzled Mrs. Bickford’s eyes; and then all at once she felt light-hearted, and the sky seemed to lift itself higher and wider from the earth, and she gave a sigh of relief as her messenger came back along the path. “I know who I do hope ’s got the right one,” she said to herself. “There, what a touse I be in! I don’t see what I had to go and pick the old rose for, anyway.”

“I declare, they did look real handsome, aunt,” said John’s hearty voice as he approached the chaise. “I set ’em up just as you told me. This one fell out, an’ I kept it. I don’t know ’s you’ll care. I can give it to Lizzie.”

He faced her now with a bright, boyish look. There was something gay in his buttonhole,—it was the red rose.

Aunt Bickford blushed like a girl. “Your choice is easy made,” she faltered mysteriously, 136and then burst out laughing, there in front of the burying-ground. “Come, get right in, dear,” she said. “Well, well! I guess the rose was made for you; it looks very pretty in your coat, John.”

She thought of Albert, and the next moment the tears came into her old eyes. John was a lover, too.

“My first husband was just such a tall, straight young man as you be,” she said as they drove along. “The flower he first give me was a rose.”

MISS TEMPY’S WATCHERS.

The time of year was April; the place was a small farming town in New Hampshire, remote from any railroad. One by one the lights had been blown out in the scattered houses near Miss Tempy Dent’s; but as her neighbors took a last look out-of-doors, their eyes turned with instinctive curiosity toward the old house, where a lamp burned steadily. They gave a little sigh. “Poor Miss Tempy!” said more than one bereft acquaintance; for the good woman lay dead in her north chamber, and the light was a watcher’s light. The funeral was set for the next day, at one o’clock.

The watchers were two of the oldest friends, Mrs. Crowe and Sarah Ann Binson. They were sitting in the kitchen, because it seemed less awesome than the unused best room, and they beguiled the long hours by steady conversation. One would think that neither topics nor opinions would hold out, at that rate, all through the long spring night; but there was a certain degree of excitement just then, and the two women had 138risen to an unusual level of expressiveness and confidence. Each had already told the other more than one fact that she had determined to keep secret; they were again and again tempted into statements that either would have found impossible by daylight. Mrs. Crowe was knitting a blue yarn stocking for her husband; the foot was already so long that it seemed as if she must have forgotten to narrow it at the proper time. Mrs. Crowe knew exactly what she was about, however; she was of a much cooler disposition than Sister Binson, who made futile attempts at some sewing, only to drop her work into her lap whenever the talk was most engaging.

Their faces were interesting,—of the dry, shrewd, quick-witted New England type, with thin hair twisted neatly back out of the way. Mrs. Crowe could look vague and benignant, and Miss Binson was, to quote her neighbors, a little too sharp-set; but the world knew that she had need to be, with the load she must carry of supporting an inefficient widowed sister and six unpromising and unwilling nieces and nephews. The eldest boy was at last placed with a good man to learn the mason’s trade. Sarah Ann Binson, 139for all her sharp, anxious aspect, never defended herself, when her sister whined and fretted. She was told every week of her life that the poor children never would have had to lift a finger if their father had lived, and yet she had kept her steadfast way with the little farm, and patiently taught the young people many useful things, for which, as everybody said, they would live to thank her. However pleasureless her life appeared to outward view, it was brimful of pleasure to herself.

Mrs. Crowe, on the contrary, was well to do, her husband being a rich farmer and an easy-going man. She was a stingy woman, but for all that she looked kindly; and when she gave away anything, or lifted a finger to help anybody, it was thought a great piece of beneficence, and a compliment, indeed, which the recipient accepted with twice as much gratitude as double the gift that came from a poorer and more generous acquaintance. Everybody liked to be on good terms with Mrs. Crowe. Socially she stood much higher than Sarah Ann Binson. They were both old schoolmates and friends of Temperance Dent, who had asked them, one day, not long before she died, if they would not 140come together and look after the house, and manage everything, when she was gone. She may have had some hope that they might become closer friends in this period of intimate partnership, and that the richer woman might better understand the burdens of the poorer. They had not kept the house the night before; they were too weary with the care of their old friend, whom they had not left until all was over.

There was a brook which ran down the hillside very near the house, and the sound of it was much louder than usual. When there was silence in the kitchen, the busy stream had a strange insistence in its wild voice, as if it tried to make the watchers understand something that related to the past.

“I declare, I can’t begin to sorrow for Tempy yet. I am so glad to have her at rest,” whispered Mrs. Crowe. “It is strange to set here without her, but I can’t make it clear that she has gone. I feel as if she had got easy and dropped off to sleep, and I’m more scared about waking her up than knowing any other feeling.”

“Yes,” said Sarah Ann, “It’s just like that, ain’t it? But I tell you we are goin’ to miss her worse than we expect. She’s 141helped me through with many a trial, has Temperance. I ain’t the only one who says the same, neither.”

These words were spoken as if there were a third person listening; somebody beside Mrs. Crowe. The watchers could not rid their minds of the feeling that they were being watched themselves. The spring wind whistled in the window crack, now and then, and buffeted the little house in a gusty way that had a sort of companionable effect. Yet, on the whole, it was a very still night, and the watchers spoke in a half-whisper.

“She was the freest-handed woman that ever I knew,” said Mrs. Crowe, decidedly. “According to her means, she gave away more than anybody. I used to tell her ’t wa’n’t right. I used really to be afraid that she went without too much, for we have a duty to ourselves.”

Sister Binson looked up in a half-amused, unconscious way, and then recollected herself.

Mrs. Crowe met her look with a serious face. “It ain’t so easy for me to give as it is for some,” she said simply, but with an effort which was made possible only by the occasion. “I should like to say, while Tempy 142is laying here yet in her own house, that she has been a constant lesson to me. Folks are too kind, and shame me with thanks for what I do. I ain’t such a generous woman as poor Tempy was, for all she had nothin’ to do with, as one may say.”

Sarah Binson was much moved at this confession, and was even pained and touched by the unexpected humility. “You have a good many calls on you”—she began, and then left her kind little compliment half finished.

“Yes, yes, but I’ve got means enough. My disposition’s more of a cross to me as I grow older, and I made up my mind this morning that Tempy’s example should be my pattern henceforth.” She began to knit faster than ever.

“’Tain’t no use to get morbid: that’s what Tempy used to say herself,” said Sarah Ann, after a minute’s silence. “Ain’t it strange to say ‘used to say’?” and her own voice choked a little. “She never did like to hear folks git goin’ about themselves.”

“’Twas only because they’re apt to do it so as other folks will say’t wasn’t so, an’ praise ’em up,” humbly replied Mrs. Crowe, “and that ain’t my object. There wa’n’t a 143child but what Tempy set herself to work to see what she could do to please it. One time my brother’s folks had been stopping here in the summer, from Massachusetts. The children was all little, and they broke up a sight of toys, and left ’em when they were going away. Tempy come right up after they rode by, to see if she couldn’t help me set the house to rights, and she caught me just as I was going to fling some of the clutter into the stove. I was kind of tired out, starting ’em off in season. ‘Oh, give me them!’ says she, real pleading; and she wropped ’em up and took ’em home with her when she went, and she mended ’em up and stuck ’em together, and made some young one or other happy with every blessed one. You’d thought I’d done her the biggest favor. ‘No thanks to me. I should ha’ burnt ’em, Tempy,’ says I.”

“Some of ’em came to our house, I know,” said Miss Binson. “She’d take a lot o’ trouble to please a child, ’stead o’ shoving of it out o’ the way, like the rest of us when we’re drove.”

“I can tell you the biggest thing she ever done, and I don’t know ’s there’s anybody left but me to tell it. I don’t want it forgot,” 144Sarah Binson went on, looking up at the clock to see how the night was going. “It was that pretty-looking Trevor girl, who taught the Corners school, and married so well afterwards, out in New York State. You remember her, I dare say?”

“Certain,” said Mrs. Crowe, with an air of interest.

“She was a splendid scholar, folks said, and give the school a great start; but she’d overdone herself getting her education, and working to pay for it, and she all broke down one spring, and Tempy made her come and stop with her a while,—you remember that? Well, she had an uncle, her mother’s brother, out in Chicago, who was well off and friendly, and used to write to Lizzie Trevor, and I dare say make her some presents; but he was a lively, driving man, and didn’t take time to stop and think about his folks. He hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl. Poor Lizzie was so pale and weakly that she just got through the term o’ school. She looked as if she was just going straight off in a decline. Tempy, she cosseted her up a while, and then, next thing folks knew, she was tellin’ round how Miss Trevor had gone to see her uncle, and meant to visit 145Niagary Falls on the way, and stop over night. Now I happened to know, in ways I won’t dwell on to explain, that the poor girl was in debt for her schoolin’ when she come here, and her last quarter’s pay had just squared it off at last, and left her without a cent ahead, hardly; but it had fretted her thinking of it, so she paid it all; those might have dunned her that she owed it to. An’ I taxed Tempy about the girl’s goin’ off on such a journey till she owned up, rather’n have Lizzie blamed, that she’d given her sixty dollars, same’s if she was rolling in riches, and sent her off to have a good rest and vacation.”

“Sixty dollars!” exclaimed Mrs. Crowe. “Tempy only had ninety dollars a year that came in to her; rest of her livin’ she got by helpin’ about, with what she raised off this little piece o’ ground, sand one side an’ clay the other. An’ how often I’ve heard her tell, years ago, that she’d rather see Niagary than any other sight in the world!”

The women looked at each other in silence; the magnitude of the generous sacrifice was almost too great for their comprehension.

“She was just poor enough to do that!” 146declared Mrs. Crowe at last, in an abandonment of feeling. “Say what you may, I feel humbled to the dust,” and her companion ventured to say nothing. She never had given away sixty dollars at once, but it was simply because she never had it to give. It came to her very lips to say in explanation, “Tempy was so situated;” but she checked herself in time, for she would not betray her own loyal guarding of a dependent household.

“Folks say a great deal of generosity, and this one’s being public-sperited, and that one free-handed about giving,” said Mrs. Crowe, who was a little nervous in the silence. “I suppose we can’t tell the sorrow it would be to some folks not to give, same’s ’twould be to me not to save. I seem kind of made for that, as if ’twas what I’d got to do. I should feel sights better about it if I could make it evident what I was savin’ for. If I had a child, now, Sarah Ann,” and her voice was a little husky,—“if I had a child, I should think I was heapin’ of it up because he was the one trained by the Lord to scatter it again for good. But here’s Mr. Crowe and me, we can’t do anything with money, and both of us like to keep things same ’s 147they’ve always been. Now Priscilla Dance was talking away like a mill-clapper, week before last. She’d think I would go right off and get one o’ them new-fashioned gilt-and-white papers for the best room, and some new furniture, an’ a marble-top table. And I looked at her, all struck up. ‘Why,’ says I, ‘Priscilla, that nice old velvet paper ain’t hurt a mite. I shouldn’t feel ’twas my best room without it. Dan’el says ’tis the first thing he can remember rubbin’ his little baby fingers on to it, and how splendid he thought them red roses was.’ I maintain,” continued Mrs. Crowe stoutly, “that folks wastes sights o’ good money doin’ just such foolish things. Tearin’ out the insides o’ meetin’-houses, and fixin’ the pews different; ’twas good enough as ’twas with mendin’; then times come, an’ they want to put it all back same ’s ’twas before.”

This touched upon an exciting subject to active members of that parish. Miss Binson and Mrs. Crowe belonged to opposite parties, and had at one time come as near hard feelings as they could, and yet escape them. Each hastened to speak of other things and to show her untouched friendliness.

148“I do agree with you,” said Sister Binson, “that few of us know what use to make of money, beyond every-day necessities. You’ve seen more o’ the world than I have, and know what’s expected. When it comes to taste and judgment about such things, I ought to defer to others;” and with this modest avowal the critical moment passed when there might have been an improper discussion.

In the silence that followed, the fact of their presence in a house of death grew more clear than before. There was something disturbing in the noise of a mouse gnawing at the dry boards of a closet wall near by. Both the watchers looked up anxiously at the clock; it was almost the middle of the night, and the whole world seemed to have left them alone with their solemn duty. Only the brook was awake.

“Perhaps we might give a look upstairs now,” whispered Mrs. Crowe, as if she hoped to hear some reason against their going just then to the chamber of death; but Sister Binson rose, with a serious and yet satisfied countenance, and lifted the small lamp from the table. She was much more used to watching than Mrs. Crowe, and 149much less affected by it. They opened the door into a small entry with a steep stairway; they climbed the creaking stairs, and entered the cold upper room on tiptoe. Mrs. Crowe’s heart began to beat very fast as the lamp was put on a high bureau, and made long, fixed shadows about the walls. She went hesitatingly toward the solemn shape under its white drapery, and felt a sense of remonstrance as Sarah Ann gently, but in a business-like way, turned back the thin sheet.

“Seems to me she looks pleasanter and pleasanter,” whispered Sarah Ann Binson impulsively, as they gazed at the white face with its wonderful smile. “To-morrow ’twill all have faded out. I do believe they kind of wake up a day or two after they die, and it’s then they go.” She replaced the light covering, and they both turned quickly away; there was a chill in this upper room.

“’Tis a great thing for anybody to have got through, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Crowe softly, as she began to go down the stairs on tiptoe. The warm air from the kitchen beneath met them with a sense of welcome and shelter.

“I don’ know why it is, but I feel as near 150again to Tempy down here as I do up there,” replied Sister Binson. “I feel as if the air was full of her, kind of. I can sense things, now and then, that she seems to say. Now I never was one to take up with no nonsense of sperits and such, but I declare I felt as if she told me just now to put some more wood into the stove.”

Mrs. Crowe preserved a gloomy silence. She had suspected before this that her companion was of a weaker and more credulous disposition than herself. “’Tis a great thing to have got through,” she repeated, ignoring definitely all that had last been said. “I suppose you know as well as I that Tempy was one that always feared death. Well, it’s all put behind her now; she knows what ’tis.” Mrs. Crowe gave a little sigh, and Sister Binson’s quick sympathies were stirred toward this other old friend, who also dreaded the great change.

“I’d never like to forgit almost those last words Tempy spoke plain to me,” she said gently, like the comforter she truly was. “She looked up at me once or twice, that last afternoon after I come to set by her, and let Mis’ Owen go home; and I says, ‘Can I do anything to ease you, Tempy?’ and the 151tears come into my eyes so I couldn’t see what kind of a nod she give me. ‘No, Sarah Ann, you can’t, dear,’ says she; and then she got her breath again, and says she, looking at me real meanin’, ‘I’m only a-gettin’ sleepier and sleepier; that’s all there is,’ says she, and smiled up at me kind of wishful, and shut her eyes. I knew well enough all she meant. She’d been lookin’ out for a chance to tell me, and I don’ know ’s she ever said much afterwards.”

Mrs. Crowe was not knitting; she had been listening too eagerly. “Yes, ’twill be a comfort to think of that sometimes,” she said, in acknowledgment.

“I know that old Dr. Prince said once, in evenin’ meetin’, that he’d watched by many a dyin’ bed, as we well knew, and enough o’ his sick folks had been scared o’ dyin’ their whole lives through; but when they come to the last, he’d never seen one but was willin’, and most were glad, to go. ‘’Tis as natural as bein’ born or livin’ on,’ he said. I don’t know what had moved him to speak that night. You know he wa’n’t in the habit of it, and ’twas the monthly concert of prayer for foreign missions anyways,” said Sarah Ann; “but ’twas a great 152stay to the mind to listen to his words of experience.”

“There never was a better man,” responded Mrs. Crowe, in a really cheerful tone. She had recovered from her feeling of nervous dread, the kitchen was so comfortable with lamplight and firelight; and just then the old clock began to tell the hour of twelve with leisurely whirring strokes.

Sister Binson laid aside her work, and rose quickly and went to the cupboard. “We’d better take a little to eat,” she explained. “The night will go fast after this. I want to know if you went and made some o’ your nice cupcake, while you was home to-day?” she asked, in a pleased tone; and Mrs. Crowe acknowledged such a gratifying piece of thoughtfulness for this humble friend who denied herself all luxuries. Sarah Ann brewed a generous cup of tea, and the watchers drew their chairs up to the table presently, and quelled their hunger with good country appetites. Sister Binson put a spoon into a small, old-fashioned glass of preserved quince, and passed it to her friend. She was most familiar with the house, and played the part of hostess. “Spread some o’ this on your bread and 153butter,” she said to Mrs. Crowe. “Tempy wanted me to use some three or four times, but I never felt to. I know she’d like to have us comfortable now, and would urge us to make a good supper, poor dear.”

“What excellent preserves she did make!” mourned Mrs. Crowe. “None of us has got her light hand at doin’ things tasty. She made the most o’ everything, too. Now, she only had that one old quince-tree down in the far corner of the piece, but she’d go out in the spring and tend to it, and look at it so pleasant, and kind of expect the old thorny thing into bloomin’.”

“She was just the same with folks,” said Sarah Ann. “And she’d never git more ’n a little apernful o’ quinces, but she’d have every mite o’ goodness out o’ those, and set the glasses up onto her best-room closet shelf, so pleased. ‘T wa’n’t but a week ago to-morrow mornin’ I fetched her a little taste o’ jelly in a teaspoon; and she says ‘Thank ye,’ and took it, an’ the minute she tasted it she looked up at me as worried as could be. ‘Oh, I don’t want to eat that,’ says she. ‘I always keep that in case o’ sickness.’ ‘You’re goin’ to have the good o’ one tumbler yourself,’ says I. ‘I’d just like to know 154who’s sick now, if you ain’t!’ An’ she couldn’t help laughin’, I spoke up so smart. Oh, dear me, how I shall miss talkin’ over things with her! She always sensed things, and got just the p’int you meant.”

“She didn’t begin to age until two or three years ago, did she?” asked Mrs. Crowe. “I never saw anybody keep her looks as Tempy did. She looked young long after I begun to feel like an old woman. The doctor used to say ’twas her young heart, and I don’t know but what he was right. How she did do for other folks! There was one spell she wasn’t at home a day to a fortnight. She got most of her livin’ so, and that made her own potatoes and things last her through. None o’ the young folks could get married without her, and all the old ones was disappointed if she wa’n’t round when they was down with sickness and had to go. An’ cleanin’, or tailorin’ for boys, or rug-hookin’,—there was nothin’ but what she could do as handy as most. ‘I do love to work,’—ain’t you heard her say that twenty times a week?”

Sarah Ann Binson nodded, and began to clear away the empty plates. “We may want a taste o’ somethin’ more towards 155mornin’,” she said. “There’s plenty in the closet here; and in case some comes from a distance to the funeral, we’ll have a little table spread after we get back to the house.”

“Yes, I was busy all the mornin’. I’ve cooked up a sight o’ things to bring over,” said Mrs. Crowe. “I felt ’twas the last I could do for her.”

They drew their chairs near the stove again, and took up their work. Sister Binson’s rocking-chair creaked as she rocked; the brook sounded louder than ever. It was more lonely when nobody spoke, and presently Mrs. Crowe returned to her thoughts of growing old.

“Yes, Tempy aged all of a sudden. I remember I asked her if she felt as well as common, one day, and she laughed at me good. There, when Mr. Crowe begun to look old, I couldn’t help feeling as if somethin’ ailed him, and like as not ’twas somethin’ he was goin’ to git right over, and I dosed him for it stiddy, half of one summer.”

“How many things we shall be wanting to ask Tempy!” exclaimed Sarah Ann Binson, after a long pause. “I can’t make up my mind to doin’ without her. I wish folks could come back just once, and tell us how 156’tis where they’ve gone. Seems then we could do without ’em better.”

The brook hurried on, the wind blew about the house now and then; the house itself was a silent place, and the supper, the warm fire, and an absence of any new topics for conversation made the watchers drowsy. Sister Binson closed her eyes first, to rest them for a minute; and Mrs. Crowe glanced at her compassionately, with a new sympathy for the hard-worked little woman. She made up her mind to let Sarah Ann have a good rest, while she kept watch alone; but in a few minutes her own knitting was dropped, and she, too, fell asleep. Overhead, the pale shape of Tempy Dent, the outworn body of that generous, loving-hearted, simple soul, slept on also in its white raiment. Perhaps Tempy herself stood near, and saw her own life and its surroundings with new understanding. Perhaps she herself was the only watcher.

Later, by some hours, Sarah Ann Binson woke with a start. There was a pale light of dawn outside the small windows. Inside the kitchen, the lamp burned dim. Mrs. Crowe awoke, too.

157“I think Tempy’d be the first to say ’twas just as well we both had some rest,” she said, not without a guilty feeling.

Her companion went to the outer door, and opened it wide. The fresh air was none too cold, and the brook’s voice was not nearly so loud as it had been in the midnight darkness. She could see the shapes of the hills, and the great shadows that lay across the lower country. The east was fast growing bright.

“’Twill be a beautiful day for the funeral,” she said, and turned again, with a sigh, to follow Mrs. Crowe up the stairs.

MARTHA’S LADY. — I. — II. — III. — IV. — V.

One day, many years ago, the old Judge Pyne house wore an unwonted look of gayety and youthfulness. The high-fenced green garden was bright with June flowers. Under the elms in the large shady front yard you might see some chairs placed near together, as they often used to be when the family were all at home and life was going on gayly with eager talk and pleasure-making; when the elder judge, the grandfather, used to quote that great author, Dr. Johnson, and say to his girls, “Be brisk, be splendid, and be public.”

One of the chairs had a crimson silk shawl thrown carelessly over its straight back, and a passer-by, who looked in through the latticed gate between the tall gate-posts with their white urns, might think that this piece of shining East Indian color was a huge red lily that had suddenly bloomed against the syringa bush. There were certain windows 159thrown wide open that were usually shut, and their curtains were blowing free in the light wind of a summer afternoon; it looked as if a large household had returned to the old house to fill the prim best rooms and find them full of cheer.

It was evident to every one in town that Miss Harriet Pyne, to use the village phrase, had company. She was the last of her family, and was by no means old; but being the last, and wonted to live with people much older than herself, she had formed all the habits of a serious elderly person. Ladies of her age, something past thirty, often wore discreet caps in those days, especially if they were married, but being single, Miss Harriet clung to youth in this respect, making the one concession of keeping her waving chestnut hair as smooth and stiffly arranged as possible. She had been the dutiful companion of her father and mother in their latest years, all her elder brothers and sisters having married and gone, or died and gone, out of the old house. Now that she was left alone it seemed quite the best thing frankly to accept the fact of age, and to turn more resolutely than ever to the companionship of duty and serious books. She was more serious 160and given to routine than her elders themselves, as sometimes happened when the daughters of New England gentlefolks were brought up wholly in the society of their elders. At thirty-five she had more reluctance than her mother to face an unforeseen occasion, certainly more than her grandmother, who had preserved some cheerful inheritance of gayety and worldliness from colonial times.

There was something about the look of the crimson silk shawl in the front yard to make one suspect that the sober customs of the best house in a quiet New England village were all being set at defiance, and once when the mistress of the house came to stand in her own doorway, she wore the pleased but somewhat apprehensive look of a guest. In these days New England life held the necessity of much dignity and discretion of behavior; there was the truest hospitality and good cheer in all occasional festivities, but it was sometimes a self-conscious hospitality, followed by an inexorable return to asceticism both of diet and of behavior. Miss Harriet Pyne belonged to the very dullest days of New England, those which perhaps held the most priggishness for the learned professions, 161the most limited interpretation of the word “evangelical,” and the pettiest indifference to large things. The outbreak of a desire for larger religious freedom caused at first a most determined reaction toward formalism, especially in small and quiet villages like Ashford, intently busy with their own concerns. It was high time for a little leaven to begin its work, in this moment when the great impulses of the war for liberty had died away and those of the coming war for patriotism and a new freedom had hardly yet begun.

The dull interior, the changed life of the old house, whose former activities seemed to have fallen sound asleep, really typified these larger conditions, and a little leaven had made its easily recognized appearance in the shape of a light-hearted girl. She was Miss Harriet’s young Boston cousin, Helena Vernon, who, half-amused and half-impatient at the unnecessary sober-mindedness of her hostess and of Ashford in general, had set herself to the difficult task of gayety. Cousin Harriet looked on at a succession of ingenious and, on the whole, innocent attempts at pleasure, as she might have looked on at the 162frolics of a kitten who easily substitutes a ball of yarn for the uncertainties of a bird or a wind-blown leaf, and who may at any moment ravel the fringe of a sacred curtain-tassel in preference to either.

Helena, with her mischievous appealing eyes, with her enchanting old songs and her guitar, seemed the more delightful and even reasonable because she was so kind to everybody, and because she was a beauty. She had the gift of most charming manners. There was all the unconscious lovely ease and grace that had come with the good breeding of her city home, where many pleasant people came and went; she had no fear, one had almost said no respect, of the individual, and she did not need to think of herself. Cousin Harriet turned cold with apprehension when she saw the minister coming in at the front gate, and wondered in agony if Martha were properly attired to go to the door, and would by any chance hear the knocker; it was Helena who, delighted to have anything happen, ran to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr. Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age. She could behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and even contrive 163to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the poems of Emerson, and feeling the unusual stir of gallantry in his proper heart, it was Helena who caught the honored hat of the late Judge Pyne from its last resting-place in the hall, and holding it securely in both hands, mimicked the minister’s self-conscious entrance. She copied his pompous and anxious expression in the dim parlor in such delicious fashion that Miss Harriet, who could not always extinguish a ready spark of the original sin of humor, laughed aloud.

“My dear!” she exclaimed severely the next moment, “I am ashamed of your being so disrespectful!” and then laughed again, and took the affecting old hat and carried it back to its place.

“I would not have had any one else see you for the world,” she said sorrowfully as she returned, feeling quite self-possessed again, to the parlor doorway; but Helena still sat in the minister’s chair, with her small feet placed as his stiff boots had been, 164and a copy of his solemn expression before they came to speaking of Emerson and of the guitar. “I wish I had asked him if he would be so kind as to climb the cherry-tree,” said Helena, unbending a little at the discovery that her cousin would consent to laugh no more. “There are all those ripe cherries on the top branches. I can climb as high as he, but I can’t reach far enough from the last branch that will bear me. The minister is so long and thin”—

“I don’t know what Mr. Crofton would have thought of you; he is a very serious young man,” said cousin Harriet, still ashamed of her laughter. “Martha will get the cherries for you, or one of the men. I should not like to have Mr. Crofton think you were frivolous, a young lady of your opportunities”—but Helena had escaped through the hall and out at the garden door at the mention of Martha’s name. Miss Harriet Pyne sighed anxiously, and then smiled, in spite of her deep convictions, as she shut the blinds and tried to make the house look solemn again.

The front door might be shut, but the garden door at the other end of the broad hall was wide open upon the large sunshiny 165garden, where the last of the red and white peonies and the golden lilies, and the first of the tall blue larkspurs lent their colors in generous fashion. The straight box borders were all in fresh and shining green of their new leaves, and there was a fragrance of the old garden’s inmost life and soul blowing from the honeysuckle blossoms on a long trellis. It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun was low behind great apple-trees at the garden’s end, which threw their shadows over the short turf of the bleaching-green. The cherry-trees stood at one side in full sunshine, and Miss Harriet, who presently came to the garden steps to watch like a hen at the water’s edge, saw her cousin’s pretty figure in its white dress of India muslin hurrying across the grass. She was accompanied by the tall, ungainly shape of Martha the new maid, who, dull and indifferent to every one else, showed a surprising willingness and allegiance to the young guest.

“Martha ought to be in the dining-room, already, slow as she is; it wants but half an hour of tea-time,” said Miss Harriet, as she turned and went into the shaded house. It was Martha’s duty to wait at table, and there had been many trying scenes 166and defeated efforts toward her education. Martha was certainly very clumsy, and she seemed the clumsier because she had replaced her aunt, a most skillful person, who had but lately married a thriving farm and its prosperous owner. It must be confessed that Miss Harriet was a most bewildering instructor, and that her pupil’s brain was easily confused and prone to blunders. The coming of Helena had been somewhat dreaded by reason of this incompetent service, but the guest took no notice of frowns or futile gestures at the first tea-table, except to establish friendly relations with Martha on her own account by a reassuring smile. They were about the same age, and next morning, before cousin Harriet came down, Helena showed by a word and a quick touch the right way to do something that had gone wrong and been impossible to understand the night before. A moment later the anxious mistress came in without suspicion, but Martha’s eyes were as affectionate as a dog’s, and there was a new look of hopefulness on her face; this dreaded guest was a friend after all, and not a foe come from proud Boston to confound her ignorance and patient efforts.

167The two young creatures, mistress and maid, were hurrying across the bleaching-green.

“I can’t reach the ripest cherries,” explained Helena politely, “and I think that Miss Pyne ought to send some to the minister. He has just made us a call. Why, Martha, you haven’t been crying again!”

“Yes’m,” said Martha sadly. “Miss Pyne always loves to send something to the minister,” she acknowledged with interest, as if she did not wish to be asked to explain these latest tears.

“We’ll arrange some of the best cherries in a pretty dish. I’ll show you how, and you shall carry them over to the parsonage after tea,” said Helena cheerfully, and Martha accepted the embassy with pleasure. Life was beginning to hold moments of something like delight in the last few days.

“You’ll spoil your pretty dress, Miss Helena,” Martha gave shy warning, and Miss Helena stood back and held up her skirts with unusual care while the country girl, in her heavy blue checked gingham, began to climb the cherry-tree like a boy.

Down came the scarlet fruit like bright rain into the green grass.

168“Break some nice twigs with the cherries and leaves together; oh, you’re a duck, Martha!” and Martha, flushed with delight, and looking far more like a thin and solemn blue heron, came rustling down to earth again, and gathered the spoils into her clean apron.

That night at tea, during her handmaiden’s temporary absence, Miss Harriet announced, as if by way of apology, that she thought Martha was beginning to understand something about her work. “Her aunt was a treasure, she never had to be told anything twice; but Martha has been as clumsy as a calf,” said the precise mistress of the house. “I have been afraid sometimes that I never could teach her anything. I was quite ashamed to have you come just now, and find me so unprepared to entertain a visitor.”

“Oh, Martha will learn fast enough because she cares so much,” said the visitor eagerly. “I think she is a dear good girl. I do hope that she will never go away. I think she does things better every day, cousin Harriet,” added Helena pleadingly, with all her kind young heart. The china-closet door was open a little way, and Martha heard 169every word. From that moment, she not only knew what love was like, but she knew love’s dear ambitions. To have come from a stony hill farm and a bare small wooden house, was like a cave-dweller’s coming to make a permanent home in an art museum, such had seemed the elaborateness and elegance of Miss Pyne’s fashion of life; and Martha’s simple brain was slow enough in its processes and recognitions. But with this sympathetic ally and defender, this exquisite Miss Helena who believed in her, all difficulties appeared to vanish.

Later that evening, no longer homesick or hopeless, Martha returned from her polite errand to the minister, and stood with a sort of triumph before the two ladies, who were sitting in the front doorway, as if they were waiting for visitors, Helena still in her white muslin and red ribbons, and Miss Harriet in a thin black silk. Being happily self-forgetful in the greatness of the moment, Martha’s manners were perfect, and she looked for once almost pretty and quite as young as she was.

“The minister came to the door himself, and returned his thanks. He said that cherries were always his favorite fruit, and he 170was much obliged to both Miss Pyne and Miss Vernon. He kept me waiting a few minutes, while he got this book ready to send to you, Miss Helena.”

“What are you saying, Martha? I have sent him nothing!” exclaimed Miss Pyne, much astonished. “What does she mean, Helena?”

“Only a few cherries,” explained Helena. “I thought Mr. Crofton would like them after his afternoon of parish calls. Martha and I arranged them before tea, and I sent them with our compliments.”

“Oh, I am very glad you did,” said Miss Harriet, wondering, but much relieved. “I was afraid”—

“No, it was none of my mischief,” answered Helena daringly. “I did not think that Martha would be ready to go so soon. I should have shown you how pretty they looked among their green leaves. We put them in one of your best white dishes with the openwork edge. Martha shall show you to-morrow; mamma always likes to have them so.” Helena’s fingers were busy with the hard knot of a parcel.

“See this, cousin Harriet!” she announced proudly, as Martha disappeared 171round the corner of the house, beaming with the pleasures of adventure and success. “Look! the minister has sent me a book: Sermons on what? Sermons—it is so dark that I can’t quite see.”

“It must be his ‘Sermons on the Seriousness of Life;’ they are the only ones he has printed, I believe,” said Miss Harriet, with much pleasure. “They are considered very fine discourses. He pays you a great compliment, my dear. I feared that he noticed your girlish levity.”

“I behaved beautifully while he stayed,” insisted Helena. “Ministers are only men,” but she blushed with pleasure. It was certainly something to receive a book from its author, and such a tribute made her of more value to the whole reverent household. The minister was not only a man, but a bachelor, and Helena was at the age that best loves conquest; it was at any rate comfortable to be reinstated in cousin Harriet’s good graces.

“Do ask the kind gentleman to tea! He needs a little cheering up,” begged the siren in India muslin, as she laid the shiny black volume of sermons on the stone doorstep with an air of approval, but as if they had quite finished their mission.

172“Perhaps I shall, if Martha improves as much as she has within the last day or two,” Miss Harriet promised hopefully. “It is something I always dread a little when I am all alone, but I think Mr. Crofton likes to come. He converses so elegantly.”

These were the days of long visits, before affectionate friends thought it quite worth while to take a hundred miles’ journey merely to dine or to pass a night in one another’s houses. Helena lingered through the pleasant weeks of early summer, and departed unwillingly at last to join her family at the White Hills, where they had gone, like other households of high social station, to pass the month of August out of town. The happy-hearted young guest left many lamenting friends behind her, and promised each that she would come back again next year. She left the minister a rejected lover, as well as the preceptor of the academy, but with their pride unwounded, and it may have been with wider outlooks upon the world and a less narrow sympathy both for their own work in life and 173for their neighbors’ work and hindrances. Even Miss Harriet Pyne herself had lost some of the unnecessary provincialism and prejudice which had begun to harden a naturally good and open mind and affectionate heart. She was conscious of feeling younger and more free, and not so lonely. Nobody had ever been so gay, so fascinating, or so kind as Helena, so full of social resource, so simple and undemanding in her friendliness. The light of her young life cast no shadow on either young or old companions, her pretty clothes never seemed to make other girls look dull or out of fashion. When she went away up the street in Miss Harriet’s carriage to take the slow train toward Boston and the gayeties of the new Profile House, where her mother waited impatiently with a group of Southern friends, it seemed as if there would never be any more picnics or parties in Ashford, and as if society had nothing left to do but to grow old and get ready for winter.

Martha came into Miss Helena’s bedroom that last morning, and it was easy to see that she had been crying; she looked just as she did in that first sad week of 174homesickness and despair. All for love’s sake she had been learning to do many things, and to do them exactly right; her eyes had grown quick to see the smallest chance for personal service. Nobody could be more humble and devoted; she looked years older than Helena, and wore already a touching air of caretaking.

“You spoil me, you dear Martha!” said Helena from the bed. “I don’t know what they will say at home, I am so spoiled.”

Martha went on opening the blinds to let in the brightness of the summer morning, but she did not speak.

“You are getting on splendidly, aren’t you?” continued the little mistress. “You have tried so hard that you make me ashamed of myself. At first you crammed all the flowers together, and now you make them look beautiful. Last night cousin Harriet was so pleased when the table was so charming, and I told her that you did everything yourself, every bit. Won’t you keep the flowers fresh and pretty in the house until I come back? It’s so much pleasanter for Miss Pyne, and you’ll feed my little sparrows, won’t you? They’re growing so tame.”

175“Oh, yes, Miss Helena!” and Martha looked almost angry for a moment, then she burst into tears and covered her face with her apron. “I couldn’t understand a single thing when I first came. I never had been anywhere to see anything, and Miss Pyne frightened me when she talked. It was you made me think I could ever learn. I wanted to keep the place, ’count of mother and the little boys; we’re dreadful hard pushed. Hepsy has been good in the kitchen; she said she ought to have patience with me, for she was awkward herself when she first came.”

Helena laughed; she looked so pretty under the tasseled white curtains.

“I dare say Hepsy tells the truth,” she said. “I wish you had told me about your mother. When I come again, some day we’ll drive up country, as you call it, to see her. Martha! I wish you would think of me sometimes after I go away. Won’t you promise?” and the bright young face suddenly grew grave. “I have hard times myself; I don’t always learn things that I ought to learn, I don’t always put things straight. I wish you wouldn’t forget me ever, and would just believe in me. I think it does help more than anything.”

176“I won’t forget,” said Martha slowly. “I shall think of you every day.” She spoke almost with indifference, as if she had been asked to dust a room, but she turned aside quickly and pulled the little mat under the hot water jug quite out of its former straightness; then she hastened away down the long white entry, weeping as she went.

To lose out of sight the friend whom one has loved and lived to please is to lose joy out of life. But if love is true, there comes presently a higher joy of pleasing the ideal, that is to say, the perfect friend. The same old happiness is lifted to a higher level. As for Martha, the girl who stayed behind in Ashford, nobody’s life could seem duller to those who could not understand; she was slow of step, and her eyes were almost always downcast as if intent upon incessant toil; but they startled you when she looked up, with their shining light. She was capable of the happiness of holding fast to a great sentiment, the ineffable satisfaction of trying to please one whom she truly loved. She never thought of trying to make other 177people pleased with herself; all she lived for was to do the best she could for others, and to conform to an ideal, which grew at last to be like a saint’s vision, a heavenly figure painted upon the sky.

On Sunday afternoons in summer, Martha sat by the window of her chamber, a low-storied little room, which looked into the side yard and the great branches of an elm-tree. She never sat in the old wooden rocking-chair except on Sundays like this; it belonged to the day of rest and to happy meditation. She wore her plain black dress and a clean white apron, and held in her lap a little wooden box, with a brass ring on top for a handle. She was past sixty years of age and looked even older, but there was the same look on her face that it had sometimes worn in girlhood. She was the same Martha; her hands were old-looking and work-worn, but her face still shone. It seemed like yesterday that Helena Vernon had gone away, and it was more than forty years.

War and peace had brought their changes and great anxieties, the face of the earth was furrowed by floods and fire, the faces of 178mistress and maid were furrowed by smiles and tears, and in the shy the stars shone on as if nothing had happened. The village of Ashford added a few pages to its unexciting history, the minister preached, the people listened; now and then a funeral crept along the street, and now and then the bright face of a little child rose above the horizon of a family pew. Miss Harriet Pyne lived on in the large white house, which gained more and more distinction because it suffered no changes, save successive repaintings and a new railing about its stately roof. Miss Harriet herself had moved far beyond the uncertainties of an anxious youth. She had long ago made all her decisions, and settled all necessary questions; her scheme of life was as faultless as the miniature landscape of a Japanese garden, and as easily kept in order. The only important change she would ever be capable of making was the final change to another and a better world; and for that nature itself would gently provide, and her own innocent life.

Hardly any great social event had ruffled the easy current of life since Helena Vernon’s marriage. To this Miss Pyne had gone, stately in appearance and carrying 179gifts of some old family silver which bore the Vernon crest, but not without some protest in her heart against the uncertainties of married life. Helena was so equal to a happy independence and even to the assistance of other lives grown strangely dependent upon her quick sympathies and instinctive decisions, that it was hard to let her sink her personality in the affairs of another. Yet a brilliant English match was not without its attractions to an old-fashioned gentlewoman like Miss Pyne, and Helena herself was amazingly happy; one day there had come a letter to Ashford, in which her very heart seemed to beat with love and self-forgetfulness, to tell cousin Harriet of such new happiness and high hope. “Tell Martha all that I say about my dear Jack,” wrote the eager girl; “please show my letter to Martha, and tell her that I shall come home next summer and bring the handsomest and best man in the world to Ashford. I have told him all about the dear house and the dear garden; there never was such a lad to reach for cherries with his six-foot-two.” Miss Pyne, wondering a little, gave the letter to Martha, who took it deliberately and as if she wondered 180too, and went away to read it slowly by herself. Martha cried over it, and felt a strange sense of loss and pain; it hurt her heart a little to read about the cherry-picking. Her idol seemed to be less her own since she had become the idol of a stranger. She never had taken such a letter in her hands before, but love at last prevailed, since Miss Helena was happy, and she kissed the last page where her name was written, feeling overbold, and laid the envelope on Miss Pyne’s secretary without a word.

The most generous love cannot but long for reassurance, and Martha had the joy of being remembered. She was not forgotten when the day of the wedding drew near, but she never knew that Miss Helena had asked if cousin Harriet would not bring Martha to town; she should like to have Martha there to see her married. “She would help about the flowers,” wrote the happy girl; “I know she will like to come, and I’ll ask mamma to plan to have some one take her all about Boston and make her have a pleasant time after the hurry of the great day is over.”

Cousin Harriet thought it was very kind 181and exactly like Helena, but Martha would be out of her element; it was most imprudent and girlish to have thought of such a thing. Helena’s mother would be far from wishing for any unnecessary guest just then, in the busiest part of her household, and it was best not to speak of the invitation. Some day Martha should go to Boston if she did well, but not now. Helena did not forget to ask if Martha had come, and was astonished by the indifference of the answer. It was the first thing which reminded her that she was not a fairy princess having everything her own way in that last day before the wedding. She knew that Martha would have loved to be near, for she could not help understanding in that moment of her own happiness the love that was hidden in another heart. Next day this happy young princess, the bride, cut a piece of a great cake and put it into a pretty box that had held one of her wedding presents. With eager voices calling her, and all her friends about her, and her mother’s face growing more and more wistful at the thought of parting, she still lingered and ran to take one or two trifles from her dressing-table, a little mirror and 182some tiny scissors that Martha would remember, and one of the pretty handkerchiefs marked with her maiden name. These she put in the box too; it was half a girlish freak and fancy, but she could not help trying to share her happiness, and Martha’s life was so plain and dull. She whispered a message, and put the little package into cousin Harriet’s hand for Martha as she said good-by. She was very fond of cousin Harriet. She smiled with a gleam of her old fun; Martha’s puzzled look and tall awkward figure seemed to stand suddenly before her eyes, as she promised to come again to Ashford. Impatient voices called to Helena, her lover was at the door, and she hurried away, leaving her old home and her girlhood gladly. If she had only known it, as she kissed cousin Harriet good-by, they were never going to see each other again until they were old women. The first step that she took out of her father’s house that day, married, and full of hope and joy, was a step that led her away from the green elms of Boston Common and away from her own country and those she loved best, to a brilliant, much-varied foreign life, and to nearly all the sorrows and nearly all the 183joys that the heart of one woman could hold or know.

On Sunday afternoons Martha used to sit by the window in Ashford and hold the wooden box which a favorite young brother, who afterward died at sea, had made for her, and she used to take out of it the pretty little box with a gilded cover that had held the piece of wedding-cake, and the small scissors, and the blurred bit of a mirror in its silver case; as for the handkerchief with the narrow lace edge, once in two or three years she sprinkled it as if it were a flower, and spread it out in the sun on the old bleaching-green, and sat near by in the shrubbery to watch lest some bold robin or cherry-bird should seize it and fly away.

Miss Harriet Pyne was often congratulated upon the good fortune of having such a helper and friend as Martha. As time went on this tall, gaunt woman, always thin, always slow, gained a dignity of behavior and simple affectionateness of look which suited the charm and dignity of the ancient house. She was unconsciously beautiful 184like a saint, like the picturesqueness of a lonely tree which lives to shelter unnumbered lives and to stand quietly in its place. There was such rustic homeliness and constancy belonging to her, such beautiful powers of apprehension, such reticence, such gentleness for those who were troubled or sick; all these gifts and graces Martha hid in her heart. She never joined the church because she thought she was not good enough, but life was such a passion and happiness of service that it was impossible not to be devout, and she was always in her humble place on Sundays, in the back pew next the door. She had been educated by a remembrance; Helena’s young eyes forever looked at her reassuringly from a gay girlish face. Helena’s sweet patience in teaching her own awkwardness could never be forgotten.

“I owe everything to Miss Helena,” said Martha, half aloud, as she sat alone by the window; she had said it to herself a thousand times. When she looked in the little keepsake mirror she always hoped to see some faint reflection of Helena Vernon, but there was only her own brown old New England face to look back at her wonderingly.

185Miss Pyne went less and less often to pay visits to her friends in Boston; there were very few friends left to come to Ashford and make long visits in the summer, and life grew more and more monotonous. Now and then there came news from across the sea and messages of remembrance, letters that were closely written on thin sheets of paper, and that spoke of lords and ladies, of great journeys, of the death of little children and the proud successes of boys at school, of the wedding of Helena Dysart’s only daughter; but even that had happened years ago. These things seemed far away and vague, as if they belonged to a story and not to life itself; the true links with the past were quite different. There was the unvarying flock of ground-sparrows that Helena had begun to feed; every morning Martha scattered crumbs for them from the side doorsteps while Miss Pyne watched from the dining-room window, and they were counted and cherished year by year.

Miss Pyne herself had many fixed habits, but little ideality or imagination, and so at last it was Martha who took thought for her mistress, and gave freedom to her own good taste. After a while, without any one’s 186observing the change, the every-day ways of doing things in the house came to be the stately ways that had once belonged only to the entertainment of guests. Happily both mistress and maid seized all possible chances for hospitality, yet Miss Harriet nearly always sat alone at her exquisitely served table with its fresh flowers, and the beautiful old china which Martha handled so lovingly that there was no good excuse for keeping it hidden on closet shelves. Every year when the old cherry-trees were in fruit, Martha carried the round white old English dish with a fretwork edge, full of pointed green leaves and scarlet cherries, to the minister, and his wife never quite understood why every year he blushed and looked so conscious of the pleasure, and thanked Martha as if he had received a very particular attention. There was no pretty suggestion toward the pursuit of the fine art of housekeeping in Martha’s limited acquaintance with newspapers that she did not adopt; there was no refined old custom of the Pyne housekeeping that she consented to let go. And every day, as she had promised, she thought of Miss Helena,—oh, many times in every day: whether this thing would please her, or that be likely 187to fall in with her fancy or ideas of fitness. As far as was possible the rare news that reached Ashford through an occasional letter or the talk of guests was made part of Martha’s own life, the history of her own heart. A worn old geography often stood open at the map of Europe on the light-stand in her room, and a little old-fashioned gilt button, set with a bit of glass like a ruby, that had broken and fallen from the trimming of one of Helena’s dresses, was used to mark the city of her dwelling-place. In the changes of a diplomatic life Martha followed her lady all about the map. Sometimes the button was at Paris, and sometimes at Madrid; once, to her great anxiety, it remained long at St. Petersburg. For such a slow scholar Martha was not unlearned at last, since everything about life in these foreign towns was of interest to her faithful heart. She satisfied her own mind as she threw crumbs to the tame sparrows; it was all part of the same thing and for the same affectionate reasons.

One Sunday afternoon in early summer Miss Harriet Pyne came hurrying along the entry that led to Martha’s room and called two or three times before its inhabitant could reach the door. Miss Harriet looked unusually cheerful and excited, and she held something in her hand. “Where are you, Martha?” she called again. “Come quick, I have something to tell you!”

“Here I am, Miss Pyne,” said Martha, who had only stopped to put her precious box in the drawer, and to shut the geography.

“Who do you think is coming this very night at half past six? We must have everything as nice as we can; I must see Hannah at once. Do you remember my cousin Helena who has lived abroad so long? Miss Helena Vernon,—the Honorable Mrs. Dysart, she is now.”

“Yes, I remember her,” answered Martha, turning a little pale.

“I knew that she was in this country, and I had written to ask her to come for a long visit,” continued Miss Harriet, who did not often explain things, even to Martha, though she was always conscientious about the kind 189messages that were sent back by grateful guests. “She telegraphs that she means to anticipate her visit by a few days and come to me at once. The heat is beginning in town, I suppose. I daresay, having been a foreigner so long, she does not mind traveling on Sunday. Do you think Hannah will be prepared? We must have tea a little later.”

“Yes, Miss Harriet,” said Martha. She wondered that she could speak as usual, there was such a ringing in her ears. “I shall have time to pick some fresh strawberries; Miss Helena is so fond of our strawberries.”

“Why, I had forgotten,” said Miss Pyne, a little puzzled by something quite unusual in Martha’s face. “We must expect to find Mrs. Dysart a good deal changed, Martha; it is a great many years since she was here; I have not seen her since her wedding, and she has had a great deal of trouble, poor girl. You had better open the parlor chamber, and make it ready before you go down.”

“It is all ready,” said Martha. “I can carry some of those little sweet-brier roses upstairs before she comes.”

“Yes, you are always thoughtful,” said Miss Pyne, with unwonted feeling.

190Martha did not answer. She glanced at the telegram wistfully. She had never really suspected before that Miss Pyne knew nothing of the love that had been in her heart all these years; it was half a pain and half a golden joy to keep such a secret; she could hardly bear this moment of surprise.

Presently the news gave wings to her willing feet. When Hannah, the cook, who never had known Miss Helena, went to the parlor an hour later on some errand to her old mistress, she discovered that this stranger guest must be a very important person. She had never seen the tea-table look exactly as it did that night, and in the parlor itself there were fresh blossoming boughs in the old East India jars, and lilies in the paneled hall, and flowers everywhere, as if there were some high festivity.

Miss Pyne sat by the window watching, in her best dress, looking stately and calm; she seldom went out now, and it was almost time for the carriage. Martha was just coming in from the garden with the strawberries, and with more flowers in her apron. It was a bright cool evening in June, the golden robins sang in the elms, and the sun was going down behind the apple-trees at 191the foot of the garden. The beautiful old house stood wide open to the long-expected guest.

“I think that I shall go down to the gate,” said Miss Pyne, looking at Martha for approval, and Martha nodded and they went together slowly down the broad front walk.

There was a sound of horses and wheels on the roadside turf: Martha could not see at first; she stood back inside the gate behind the white lilac-bushes as the carriage came. Miss Pyne was there; she was holding out both arms and taking a tired, bent little figure in black to her heart. “Oh, my Miss Helena is an old woman like me!” and Martha gave a pitiful sob; she had never dreamed it would be like this; this was the one thing she could not bear.

“Where are you, Martha?” called Miss Pyne. “Martha will bring these in; you have not forgotten my good Martha, Helena?” Then Mrs. Dysart looked up and smiled just as she used to smile in the old days. The young eyes were there still in the changed face, and Miss Helena had come.

That night Martha waited in her lady’s room just as she used, humble and silent, 192and went through with the old unforgotten loving services. The long years seemed like days. At last she lingered a moment trying to think of something else that might be done, then she was going silently away, but Helena called her back. She suddenly knew the whole story and could hardly speak.

“Oh, my dear Martha!” she cried, “won’t you kiss me good-night? Oh, Martha, have you remembered like this, all these long years!”

THE GUESTS OF MRS. TIMMS. — I. — II. — III. — IV. — V.

Mrs. Persis Flagg stood in her front doorway taking leave of Miss Cynthia Pickett, who had been making a long call. They were not intimate friends. Miss Pickett always came formally to the front door and rang when she paid her visits, but, the week before, they had met at the county conference, and happened to be sent to the same house for entertainment, and so had deepened and renewed the pleasures of acquaintance.

It was an afternoon in early June; the syringa-bushes were tall and green on each side of the stone doorsteps, and were covered with their lovely white and golden flowers. Miss Pickett broke off the nearest twig, and held it before her prim face as she talked. She had a pretty childlike smile that came and went suddenly, but her face was not one that bore the marks of many pleasures. Mrs. Flagg was a tall, 194commanding sort of person, with an air of satisfaction and authority.

“Oh, yes, gather all you want,” she said stiffly, as Miss Pickett took the syringa without having asked beforehand; but she had an amiable expression, and just now her large countenance was lighted up by pleasant anticipation.

“We can tell early what sort of a day it’s goin’ to be,” she said eagerly. “There ain’t a cloud in the sky now. I’ll stop for you as I come along, or if there should be anything unforeseen to detain me, I’ll send you word. I don’t expect you’d want to go if it wa’n’t so that I could?”

“Oh my sakes, no!” answered Miss Pickett discreetly, with a timid flush. “You feel certain that Mis’ Timms won’t be put out? I shouldn’t feel free to go unless I went ’long o’ you.”

“Why, nothin’ could be plainer than her words,” said Mrs. Flagg in a tone of reproval. “You saw how she urged me, an’ had over all that talk about how we used to see each other often when we both lived to Longport, and told how she’d been thinkin’ of writin’, and askin’ if it wa’n’t so I should be able to come over and stop three or four 195days as soon as settled weather come, because she couldn’t make no fire in her best chamber on account of the chimbley smokin’ if the wind wa’n’t just right. You see how she felt toward me, kissin’ of me comin’ and goin’? Why, she even asked me who I employed to do over my bonnet, Miss Pickett, just as interested as if she was a sister; an’ she remarked she should look for us any pleasant day after we all got home, an’ were settled after the conference.”

Miss Pickett smiled, but did not speak, as if she expected more arguments still.

“An’ she seemed just about as much gratified to meet with you again. She seemed to desire to meet you again very particular,” continued Mrs. Flagg. “She really urged us to come together an’ have a real good day talkin’ over old times—there, don’t le’ ’s go all over it again! I’ve always heard she’d made that old house of her aunt Bascoms’ where she lives look real handsome. I once heard her best parlor carpet described as being an elegant carpet, different from any there was round here. Why, nobody couldn’t be more cordial, Miss Pickett; you ain’t goin’ to give out just at the last?”

196“Oh, no!” answered the visitor hastily; “no, ’m! I want to go full as much as you do, Mis’ Flagg, but you see I never was so well acquainted with Mis’ Cap’n Timms, an’ I always seem to dread putting myself for’ard. She certain was very urgent, an’ she said plain enough to come any day next week, an’ here ’tis Wednesday, though of course she wouldn’t look for us either Monday or Tuesday. ’Twill be a real pleasant occasion, an’ now we’ve been to the conference it don’t seem near so much effort to start.”

“Why, I don’t think nothin’ of it,” said Mrs. Flagg proudly. “We shall have a grand good time, goin’ together an’ all, I feel sure.”

Miss Pickett still played with her syringa flower, tapping her thin cheek, and twirling the stem with her fingers. She looked as if she were going to say something more, but after a moment’s hesitation she turned away.

“Good-afternoon, Mis’ Flagg,” she said formally, looking up with a quick little smile; “I enjoyed my call; I hope I ain’t kep’ you too late; I don’t know but what it’s ’most tea-time. Well, I shall look for you in the mornin’.”

197“Good-afternoon, Miss Pickett; I’m glad I was in when you came. Call again, won’t you?” said Mrs. Flagg. “Yes; you may expect me in good season,” and so they parted. Miss Pickett went out at the neat clicking gate in the white fence, and Mrs. Flagg a moment later looked out of her sitting-room window to see if the gate were latched, and felt the least bit disappointed to find that it was. She sometimes went out after the departure of a guest, and fastened the gate herself with a loud, rebuking sound. Both of these Woodville women lived alone, and were very precise in their way of doing things.

The next morning dawned clear and bright, and Miss Pickett rose even earlier than usual. She found it most difficult to decide which of her dresses would be best to wear. Summer was still so young that the day had all the freshness of spring, but when the two friends walked away together along the shady street, with a chorus of golden robins singing high overhead in the elms, Miss Pickett decided that she had made a wise choice of her second-best black 198silk gown, which she had just turned again and freshened. It was neither too warm for the season nor too cool, nor did it look overdressed. She wore her large cameo pin, and this, with a long watch-chain, gave an air of proper mural decoration. She was a straight, flat little person, as if, when not in use, she kept herself, silk dress and all, between the leaves of a book. She carried a noticeable parasol with a fringe, and a small shawl, with a pretty border, neatly folded over her left arm. Mrs. Flagg always dressed in black cashmere, and looked, to hasty observers, much the same one day as another; but her companion recognized the fact that this was the best black cashmere of all, and for a moment quailed at the thought that Mrs. Flagg was paying such extreme deference to their prospective hostess. The visit turned for a moment into an unexpectedly solemn formality, and pleasure seemed to wane before Cynthia Pickett’s eyes, yet with great courage she never slackened a single step. Mrs. Flagg carried a somewhat worn black leather handbag, which Miss Pickett regretted; it did not give the visit that casual and unpremeditated air which she felt to be more elegant.

199“Sha’n’t I carry your bag for you?” she asked timidly. Mrs. Flagg was the older and more important person.

“Oh, dear me, no,” answered Mrs. Flagg. “My pocket’s so remote, in case I should desire to sneeze or anything, that I thought ’twould be convenient for carrying my handkerchief and pocket-book; an’ then I just tucked in a couple o’ glasses o’ my crabapple jelly for Mis’ Timms. She used to be a great hand for preserves of every sort, an’ I thought ’twould be a kind of an attention, an’ give rise to conversation. I know she used to make excellent drop-cakes when we was both residin’ to Longport; folks used to say she never would give the right receipt, but if I get a real good chance, I mean to ask her. Or why can’t you, if I start talkin’ about receipts—why can’t you say, sort of innocent, that I have always spoken frequently of her drop-cakes, an’ ask for the rule? She would be very sensible to the compliment, and could pass it off if she didn’t feel to indulge us. There, I do so wish you would!”

“Yes, ’m,” said Miss Pickett doubtfully; “I’ll try to make the opportunity. I’m very partial to drop-cakes. Was they flour or rye, Mis’ Flagg?”

200“They was flour, dear,” replied Mrs. Flagg approvingly; “crisp an’ light as any you ever see.”

“I wish I had thought to carry somethin’ to make it pleasant,” said Miss Pickett, after they had walked a little farther; “but there, I don’t know’s ’twould look just right, this first visit, to offer anything to such a person as Mis’ Timms. In case I ever go over to Baxter again I won’t forget to make her some little present, as nice as I’ve got. ’Twas certain very polite of her to urge me to come with you. I did feel very doubtful at first. I didn’t know but she thought it behooved her, because I was in your company at the conference, and she wanted to save my feelin’s, and yet expected I would decline. I never was well acquainted with her; our folks wasn’t well off when I first knew her; ’twas before uncle Cap’n Dyer passed away an’ remembered mother an’ me in his will. We couldn’t make no han’some companies in them days, so we didn’t go to none, an’ kep’ to ourselves; but in my grandmother’s time, mother always said, the families was very friendly. I shouldn’t feel like goin’ over to pass the day with Mis’ Timms if I didn’t 201mean to ask her to return the visit. Some don’t think o’ these things, but mother was very set about not bein’ done for when she couldn’t make no return.”

“‘When it rains porridge hold up your dish,’” said Mrs. Flagg; but Miss Pickett made no response beyond a feeble “Yes, ’m,” which somehow got caught in her pale-green bonnet-strings.

“There, ’tain’t no use to fuss too much over all them things,” proclaimed Mrs. Flagg, walking along at a good pace with a fine sway of her skirts, and carrying her head high. “Folks walks right by an’ forgits all about you; folks can’t always be going through with just so much. You’d had a good deal better time, you an’ your ma, if you’d been freer in your ways; now don’t you s’pose you would? ’Tain’t what you give folks to eat so much as ’tis makin’ ’em feel welcome. Now, there’s Mis’ Timms; when we was to Longport she was dreadful methodical. She wouldn’t let Cap’n Timms fetch nobody home to dinner without lettin’ of her know, same’s other cap’ns’ wives had to submit to. I was thinkin’, when she was so cordial over to Danby, how she’d softened with time. Years do 202learn folks somethin’! She did seem very pleasant an’ desirous. There, I am so glad we got started; if she’d gone an’ got up a real good dinner to-day, an’ then not had us come till to-morrow, ’twould have been real too bad. Where anybody lives alone such a thing is very tryin’.”

“Oh, so ’tis!” said Miss Pickett. “There, I’d like to tell you what I went through with year before last. They come an’ asked me one Saturday night to entertain the minister, that time we was having candidates”—

“I guess we’d better step along faster,” said Mrs. Flagg suddenly. “Why, Miss Pickett, there’s the stage comin’ now! It’s dreadful prompt, seems to me. Quick! there’s folks awaitin’, an’ I sha’n’t get to Baxter in no state to visit Mis’ Cap’n Timms if I have to ride all the way there backward!”

The stage was not full inside. The group before the store proved to be made up of spectators, except one man, who climbed at once to a vacant seat by the driver. Inside there was only one person, after two passengers got out, and she preferred to sit with 203her back to the horses, so that Mrs. Flagg and Miss Pickett settled themselves comfortably in the coveted corners of the back seat. At first they took no notice of their companion, and spoke to each other in low tones, but presently something attracted the attention of all three and engaged them in conversation.

“I never was over this road before,” said the stranger. “I s’pose you ladies are well acquainted all along.”

“We have often traveled it in past years. We was over this part of it last week goin’ and comin’ from the county conference,” said Mrs. Flagg in a dignified manner.

“What persuasion?” inquired the fellow-traveler, with interest.

“Orthodox,” said Miss Pickett quickly, before Mrs. Flagg could speak. “It was a very interestin’ occasion; this other lady an me stayed through all the meetin’s.”

“I ain’t Orthodox,” announced the stranger, waiving any interest in personalities. “I was brought up amongst the Freewill Baptists.”

“We’re well acquainted with several of that denomination in our place,” said Mrs. Flagg, not without an air of patronage. 204“They’ve never built ’em no church; there ain’t but a scattered few.”

“They prevail where I come from,” said the traveler. “I’m goin’ now to visit with a Freewill lady. We was to a conference together once, same ’s you an’ your friend, but ’twas a state conference. She asked me to come some time an’ make her a good visit, and I’m on my way now. I didn’t seem to have nothin’ to keep me to home.”

“We’re all goin’ visitin’ to-day, ain’t we?” said Mrs. Flagg sociably; but no one carried on the conversation.

The day was growing very warm; there was dust in the sandy road, but the fields of grass and young growing crops looked fresh and fair. There was a light haze over the hills, and birds were thick in the air. When the stage-horses stopped to walk, you could hear the crows caw, and the bobolinks singing, in the meadows. All the farmers were busy in their fields.

“It don’t seem but little ways to Baxter, does it?” said Miss Pickett, after a while. “I felt we should pass a good deal o’ time on the road, but we must be pretty near half-way there a’ready.”

“Why, more ’n half!” exclaimed Mrs. 205Flagg. “Yes; there’s Beckett’s Corner right ahead, an the old Beckett house. I haven’t been on this part of the road for so long that I feel kind of strange. I used to visit over here when I was a girl. There’s a nephew’s widow owns the place now. Old Miss Susan Beckett willed it to him, an’ he died; but she resides there an’ carries on the farm, an unusual smart woman, everybody says. Ain’t it pleasant here, right out among the farms!”

“Mis’ Beckett’s place, did you observe?” said the stranger, leaning forward to listen to what her companions said. “I expect that’s where I’m goin’—Mis’ Ezra Beckett’s?”

“That’s the one,” said Miss Pickett and Mrs. Flagg together, and they both looked out eagerly as the coach drew up to the front door of a large old yellow house that stood close upon the green turf of the roadside.

The passenger looked pleased and eager, and made haste to leave the stage with her many bundles and bags. While she stood impatiently tapping at the brass knocker, the stage-driver landed a large trunk, and dragged it toward the door across the grass. Just then a busy-looking middle-aged woman 206made her appearance, with floury hands and a look as if she were prepared to be somewhat on the defensive.

“Why, how do you do, Mis’ Beckett?” exclaimed the guest. “Well, here I be at last. I didn’t know ’s you thought I was ever comin’. Why, I do declare, I believe you don’t recognize me, Mis’ Beckett.”

“I believe I don’t,” said the self-possessed hostess. “Ain’t you made some mistake, ma’am?”

“Why, don’t you recollect we was together that time to the state conference, an’ you said you should be pleased to have me come an’ make you a visit some time, an’ I said I would certain. There, I expect I look more natural to you now.”

Mrs. Beckett appeared to be making the best possible effort, and gave a bewildered glance, first at her unexpected visitor, and then at the trunk. The stage-driver, who watched this encounter with evident delight, turned away with reluctance. “I can’t wait all day to see how they settle it,” he said, and mounted briskly to the box, and the stage rolled on.

“He might have waited just a minute to see,” said Miss Pickett indignantly, but 207Mrs. Flagg’s head and shoulders were already far out of the stage window—the house was on her side. “She ain’t got in yet,” she told Miss Pickett triumphantly. “I could see ’em quite a spell. With that trunk, too! I do declare, how inconsiderate some folks is!”

“’Twas pushin’ an acquaintance most too far, wa’n’t it?” agreed Miss Pickett. “There,’twill be somethin’ laughable to tell Mis’ Timms. I never see anything more divertin’. I shall kind of pity that woman if we have to stop an’ git her as we go back this afternoon.”

“Oh, don’t let’s forgit to watch for her,” exclaimed Mrs. Flagg, beginning to brush off the dust of travel. “There, I feel an excellent appetite, don’t you? And we ain’t got more ’n three or four miles to go, if we have that. I wonder what Mis’ Timms is likely to give us for dinner; she spoke of makin’ a good many chicken-pies, an’ I happened to remark how partial I was to ’em. She felt above most of the things we had provided for us over to the conference. I know she was always counted the best o’ cooks when I knew her so well to Longport. Now, don’t you forget, if there’s a suitable 208opportunity, to inquire about the drop-cakes;” and Miss Pickett, a little less doubtful than before, renewed her promise.

“My gracious, won’t Mis’ Timms be pleased to see us! It’s just exactly the day to have company. And ain’t Baxter a sweet pretty place?” said Mrs. Flagg, as they walked up the main street. “Cynthy Pickett, now ain’t you proper glad you come? I felt sort o’ calm about it part o’ the time yesterday, but I ain’t felt so like a girl for a good while. I do believe I’m goin’ to have a splendid time.”

Miss Pickett glowed with equal pleasure as she paced along. She was less expansive and enthusiastic than her companion, but now that they were fairly in Baxter, she lent herself generously to the occasion. The social distinction of going away to spend a day in company with Mrs. Flagg was by no means small. She arranged the folds of her shawl more carefully over her arm so as to show the pretty palm-leaf border, and then looked up with great approval to the row of great maples that shaded the broad sidewalk. “I wonder if we can’t contrive to make time 209to go an’ see old Miss Nancy Fell?” she ventured to ask Mrs. Flagg. “There ain’t a great deal o’ time before the stage goes at four o’clock; ’twill pass quickly, but I should hate to have her feel hurt. If she was one we had visited often at home, I shouldn’t care so much, but such folks feel any little slight. She was a member of our church; I think a good deal of that.”

“Well, I hardly know what to say,” faltered Mrs. Flagg coldly. “We might just look in a minute; I shouldn’t want her to feel hurt.”

“She was one that always did her part, too,” said Miss Pickett, more boldly. “Mr. Cronin used to say that she was more generous with her little than many was with their much. If she hadn’t lived in a poor part of the town, and so been occupied with a different kind of people from us, ’twould have made a difference. They say she’s got a comfortable little home over here, an’ keeps house for a nephew. You know she was to our meeting one Sunday last winter, and ’peared dreadful glad to get back; folks seemed glad to see her, too. I don’t know as you were out.”

“She always wore a friendly look,” said 210Mrs. Flagg indulgently. “There, now, there’s Mis’ Timms’s residence; it’s handsome, ain’t it, with them big spruce-trees? I expect she may be at the window now, an’ see us as we come along. Is my bonnet on straight, an’ everything? The blinds looks open in the room this way; I guess she’s to home fast enough.”

The friends quickened their steps, and with shining eyes and beating hearts hastened forward. The slightest mists of uncertainty were now cleared away; they gazed at the house with deepest pleasure; the visit was about to begin.

They opened the front gate and went up the short walk, noticing the pretty herringbone pattern of the bricks, and as they stood on the high steps Cynthia Pickett wondered whether she ought not to have worn her best dress, even though there was lace at the neck and sleeves, and she usually kept it for the most formal of tea-parties and exceptional parish festivals. In her heart she commended Mrs. Flagg for that familiarity with the ways of a wider social world which had led her to wear the very best among her black cashmeres.

“She’s a good while coming to the door,” 211whispered Mrs. Flagg presently. “Either she didn’t see us, or else she’s slipped upstairs to make some change, an’ is just goin’ to let us ring again. I’ve done it myself sometimes. I’m glad we come right over after her urgin’ us so; it seems more cordial than to keep her expectin’ us. I expect she’ll urge us terribly to remain with her over night.”

“Oh, I ain’t prepared,” began Miss Pickett, but she looked pleased. At that moment there was a slow withdrawal of the bolt inside, and a key was turned, the front door opened, and Mrs. Timms stood before them with a smile. Nobody stopped to think at that moment what kind of smile it was.

“Why, if it ain’t Mis’ Flagg,” she exclaimed politely, “an’ Miss Pickett too! I am surprised!”

The front entry behind her looked well furnished, but not exactly hospitable; the stairs with their brass rods looked so clean and bright that it did not seem as if anybody had ever gone up or come down. A cat came purring out, but Mrs. Timms pushed her back with a determined foot, and hastily closed the sitting-room door. Then Miss Pickett let Mrs. Flagg precede her, as 212was becoming, and they went into a darkened parlor, and found their way to some chairs, and seated themselves solemnly.

“’Tis a beautiful day, ain’t it?” said Mrs. Flagg, speaking first. “I don’t know ’s I ever enjoyed the ride more. We’ve been having a good deal of rain since we saw you at the conference, and the country looks beautiful.”

“Did you leave Woodville this morning? I thought I hadn’t heard you was in town,” replied Mrs. Timms formally. She was seated just a little too far away to make things seem exactly pleasant. The darkness of the best room seemed to retreat somewhat, and Miss Pickett looked over by the door, where there was a pale gleam from the sidelights in the hall, to try to see the pattern of the carpet; but her effort failed.

“Yes, ’m,” replied Mrs. Flagg to the question. “We left Woodville about half past eight, but it is quite a ways from where we live to where you take the stage. The stage does come slow, but you don’t seem to mind it such a beautiful day.”

“Why, you must have come right to see me first!” said Mrs. Timms, warming a little as the visit went on. “I hope you’re 213going to make some stop in town. I’m sure it was very polite of you to come right an’ see me; well, it’s very pleasant, I declare. I wish you’d been in Baxter last Sabbath; our minister did give us an elegant sermon on faith an’ works. He spoke of the conference, and gave his views on some o’ the questions that came up, at Friday evenin’ meetin’; but I felt tired after getting home, an’ so I wasn’t out. We feel very much favored to have such a man amon’st us. He’s building up the parish very considerable. I understand the pew-rents come to thirty-six dollars more this quarter than they did last.”

“We also feel grateful in Woodville for our pastor’s efforts,” said Miss Pickett; but Mrs. Timms turned her head away sharply, as if the speech had been untimely, and trembling Miss Pickett had interrupted.

“They’re thinking here of raisin’ Mr. Barlow’s salary another year,” the hostess added; “a good many of the old parishioners have died off, but every one feels to do what they can. Is there much interest among the young people in Woodville, Mis’ Flagg?”

“Considerable at this time, ma’am,” answered 214Mrs. Flagg, without enthusiasm, and she listened with unusual silence to the subsequent fluent remarks of Mrs. Timms.

The parlor seemed to be undergoing the slow processes of a winter dawn. After a while the three women could begin to see one another’s faces, which aided them somewhat in carrying on a serious and impersonal conversation. There were a good many subjects to be touched upon, and Mrs. Timms said everything that she should have said, except to invite her visitors to walk upstairs and take off their bonnets. Mrs. Flagg sat her parlor-chair as if it were a throne, and carried her banner of self-possession as high as she knew how, but toward the end of the call even she began to feel hurried.

“Won’t you ladies take a glass of wine an’ a piece of cake after your ride?” inquired Mrs. Timms, with an air of hospitality that almost concealed the fact that neither cake nor wine was anywhere to be seen; but the ladies bowed and declined with particular elegance. Altogether it was a visit of extreme propriety on both sides, and Mrs. Timms was very pressing in her invitation that her guests should stay longer.

“Thank you, but we ought to be going,” 215answered Mrs. Flagg, with a little show of ostentation, and looking over her shoulder to be sure that Miss Pickett had risen too. “We’ve got some little ways to go,” she added with dignity. “We should be pleased to have you call an’ see us in case you have occasion to come to Woodville,” and Miss Pickett faintly seconded the invitation. It was in her heart to add, “Come any day next week,” but her courage did not rise so high as to make the words audible. She looked as if she were ready to cry; her usual smile had burnt itself out into gray ashes; there was a white, appealing look about her mouth. As they emerged from the dim parlor and stood at the open front door, the bright June day, the golden-green trees, almost blinded their eyes. Mrs. Timms was more smiling and cordial than ever.

“There, I ought to have thought to offer you fans; I am afraid you was warm after walking,” she exclaimed, as if to leave no stone of courtesy unturned. “I have so enjoyed meeting you again, I wish it was so you could stop longer. Why, Mis’ Flagg, we haven’t said one word about old times when we lived to Longport. I’ve had news from there, too, since I saw you; my brother’s 216daughter-in-law was here to pass the Sabbath after I returned.”

Mrs. Flagg did not turn back to ask any questions as she stepped stiffly away down the brick walk. Miss Pickett followed her, raising the fringed parasol; they both made ceremonious little bows as they shut the high white gate behind them. “Good-by,” said Mrs. Timms finally, as she stood in the door with her set smile; and as they departed she came out and began to fasten up a rosebush that climbed a narrow white ladder by the steps.

“Oh, my goodness alive!” exclaimed Mrs. Flagg, after they had gone some distance in aggrieved silence, “if I haven’t gone and forgotten my bag! I ain’t goin’ back, whatever happens. I expect she’ll trip over it in that dark room and break her neck!”

“I brought it; I noticed you’d forgotten it,” said Miss Pickett timidly, as if she hated to deprive her companion of even that slight consolation.

“There, I’ll tell you what we’d better do,” said Mrs. Flagg gallantly; “we’ll go right over an’ see poor old Miss Nancy Fell; ’twill please her about to death. We can say we felt like goin’ somewhere to-day, an’ ’twas 217a good many years since either one of us had seen Baxter, so we come just for the ride, an’ to make a few calls. She’ll like to hear all about the conference; Miss Fell was always one that took a real interest in religious matters.”

Miss Pickett brightened, and they quickened their step. It was nearly twelve o’clock, they had breakfasted early, and now felt as if they had eaten nothing since they were grown up. An awful feeling of tiredness and uncertainty settled down upon their once buoyant spirits.

“I can forgive a person,” said Mrs. Flagg, once, as if she were speaking to herself; “I can forgive a person, but when I’m done with ’em, I’m done.”

“I do declare, ’twas like a scene in Scriptur’ to see that poor good-hearted Nancy Fell run down her walk to open the gate for us!” said Mrs. Persis Flagg later that afternoon, when she and Miss Pickett were going home in the stage. Miss Pickett nodded her head approvingly.

“I had a good sight better time with her than I should have had at the other place,” 218she said with fearless honesty. “If I’d been Mis’ Cap’n Timms, I’d made some apology or just passed us the compliment. If it wa’n’t convenient, why couldn’t she just tell us so after all her urgin’ and sayin’ how she should expect us?”

“I thought then she’d altered from what she used to be,” said Mrs. Flagg. “She seemed real sincere an’ open away from home. If she wa’n’t prepared to-day, ’twas easy enough to say so; we was reasonable folks, an’ should have gone away with none but friendly feelin’s. We did have a grand good time with Nancy. She was as happy to see us as if we’d been queens.”

“’Twas a real nice little dinner,” said Miss Pickett gratefully. “I thought I was goin’ to faint away just before we got to the house, and I didn’t know how I should hold out if she undertook to do anything extra, and keep us awaitin’; but there, she just made us welcome, simple-hearted, to what she had. I never tasted such dandelion greens; an’ that nice little piece o’ pork and new biscuit, why, they was just splendid. She must have an excellent good cellar, if ’tis such a small house. Her potatoes 219was truly remarkable for this time o’ year. I myself don’t deem it necessary to cook potatoes when I’m goin’ to have dandelion greens. Now, didn’t it put you in mind of that verse in the Bible that says, ‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is’? An’ how desirous she’d been to see somebody that could tell her some particulars about the conference!”

“She’ll enjoy tellin’ folks about our comin’ over to see her. Yes, I’m glad we went; ’twill be of advantage every way, an’ our bein’ of the same church an’ all, to Woodville. If Mis’ Timms hears of our bein’ there, she’ll see we had reason, an’ knew of a place to go. Well, I needn’t have brought this old bag!”

Miss Pickett gave her companion a quick resentful glance, which was followed by one of triumph directed at the dust that was collecting on the shoulders of the best black cashmere; then she looked at the bag on the front seat, and suddenly felt illuminated with the suspicion that Mrs. Flagg had secretly made preparations to pass the night in Baxter. The bag looked plump, as if it held much more than the pocket-book and the jelly.

220Mrs. Flagg looked up with unusual humility. “I did think about that jelly,” she said, as if Miss Pickett had openly reproached her. “I was afraid it might look as if I was tryin’ to pay Nancy for her kindness.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Cynthia; “I guess she’d been pleased. She’d thought you just brought her over a little present: but I don’ know as ’twould been any good to her after all; she’d thought so much of it, comin’ from you, that she’d kep’ it till ’twas all candied.” But Mrs. Flagg didn’t look exactly pleased by this unexpected compliment, and her fellow-traveler colored with confusion and a sudden feeling that she had shown undue forwardness.

Presently they remembered the Beckett house, to their great relief, and, as they approached, Mrs. Flagg reached over and moved her handbag from the front seat to make room for another passenger. But nobody came out to stop the stage, and they saw the unexpected guest sitting by one of the front windows comfortably swaying a palm-leaf fan, and rocking to and fro in calm content. They shrank back into their corners, and tried not to be seen. Mrs. Flagg’s face grew very red.

221“She got in, didn’t she?” said Miss Pickett, snipping her words angrily, as if her lips were scissors. Then she heard a call, and bent forward to see Mrs. Beckett herself appear in the front doorway, very smiling and eager to stop the stage.

The driver was only too ready to stop his horses. “Got a passenger for me to carry back, ain’t ye?” said he facetiously. “Them ’s the kind I like; carry both ways, make somethin’ on a double trip,” and he gave Mrs. Flagg and Miss Pickett a friendly wink as he stepped down over the wheel. Then he hurried toward the house, evidently in a hurry to put the baggage on; but the expected passenger still sat rocking and fanning at the window.

“No, sir; I ain’t got any passengers,” exclaimed Mrs. Beckett, advancing a stop or two to meet him, and speaking very loud in her pleasant excitement. “This lady that come this morning wants her large trunk with her summer things that she left to the depot in Woodville. She’s very desirous to git into it, so don’t you go an’ forgit; ain’t you got a book or somethin’, Mr. Ma’sh? Don’t you forgit to make a note of it; here’s her check, an’ we’ve kep’ the 222number in case you should mislay it or anything. There’s things in the trunk she needs; you know how you overlooked stoppin’ to the milliner’s for my bunnit last week.”

“Other folks disremembers things as well ’s me,” grumbled Mr. Marsh. He turned to give the passengers another wink more familiar than the first, but they wore an offended air, and were looking the other way. The horses had backed a few steps, and the guest at the front window had ceased the steady motion of her fan to make them a handsome bow, and been puzzled at the lofty manner of their acknowledgment.

“Go ’long with your foolish jokes, John Ma’sh!” Mrs. Beckett said cheerfully, as she turned away. She was a comfortable, hearty person, whose appearance adjusted the beauties of hospitality. The driver climbed to his seat, chuckling, and drove away with the dust flying after the wheels.

“Now, she’s a friendly sort of a woman, that Mis’ Beckett,” said Mrs. Flagg unexpectedly, after a few moments of silence, when she and her friend had been unable to look at each other. “I really ought to call 223over an’ see her some o’ these days, knowing her husband’s folks as well as I used to, an’ visitin’ of ’em when I was a girl.” But Miss Pickett made no answer.

“I expect it was all for the best, that woman’s comin’,” suggested Mrs. Flagg again hopefully. “She looked like a willing person who would take right hold. I guess Mis’ Beckett knows what she’s about, and must have had her reasons. Perhaps she thought she’d chance it for a couple o’ weeks anyway, after the lady’d come so fur, an’ bein’ one o’ her own denomination. Hayin’-time’ll be here before we know it. I think myself, gen’rally speakin’, ’tis just as well to let anybody know you’re comin’.”

“Them seemed to be Mis’ Cap’n Timms’s views,” said Miss Pickett in a low tone; but the stage rattled a good deal, and Mrs. Flagg looked up inquiringly, as if she had not heard.

THE TOWN POOR.

Mrs. William Trimble and Miss Rebecca Wright were driving along Hampden east road, one afternoon in early spring. Their progress was slow. Mrs. Trimble’s sorrel horse was old and stiff, and the wheels were clogged by clay mud. The frost was not yet out of the ground, although the snow was nearly gone, except in a few places on the north side of the woods, or where it had drifted all winter against a length of fence.

“There must be a good deal o’ snow to the nor’ard of us yet,” said weather-wise Mrs. Trimble. “I feel it in the air; ’tis more than the ground-damp. We ain’t goin’ to have real nice weather till the up-country snow ’s all gone.”

“I heard say yesterday that there was good sleddin’ yet, all up through Parsley,” responded Miss Wright. “I shouldn’t like to live in them northern places. My cousin Ellen’s husband was a Parsley man, an’ he was obliged, as you may have heard, to go 225up north to his father’s second wife’s funeral; got back day before yesterday. ’Twas about twenty-one miles, an’ they started on wheels; but when they’d gone nine or ten miles, they found ’twas no sort o’ use, an’ left their wagon an’ took a sleigh. The man that owned it charged ’em four an’ six, too. I shouldn’t have thought he would; they told him they was goin’ to a funeral; an’ they had their own buffaloes an’ everything.”

“Well, I expect it’s a good deal harder scratchin’, up that way; they have to git money where they can; the farms is very poor as you go north,” suggested Mrs. Trimble kindly. “’Tain’t none too rich a country where we be but I’ve always been grateful I wa’n’t born up to Parsley.”

The old horse plodded along, and the sun, coming out from the heavy spring clouds, sent a sudden shine of light along the muddy road. Sister Wright drew her large veil forward over the high brim of her bonnet. She was not used to driving, or to being much in the open air; but Mrs. Trimble was an active business woman, and looked after her own affairs herself, in all weathers. The late Mr. Trimble had left her a good 226farm, but not much ready money, and it was often said that she was better off in the end than if he had lived. She regretted his loss deeply, however; it was impossible for her to speak of him, even to intimate friends, without emotion, and nobody had ever hinted that this emotion was insincere. She was most warm-hearted and generous, and in her limited way played the part of Lady Bountiful in the town of Hampden.

“Why, there’s where the Bray girls lives, ain’t it?” she exclaimed, as, beyond a thicket of witch-hazel and scrub-oak, they came in sight of a weather-beaten, solitary farmhouse. The barn was too far away for thrift or comfort, and they could see long lines of light between the shrunken boards as they came nearer. The fields looked both stony and sodden. Somehow, even Parsley itself could be hardly more forlorn.

“Yes’m,” said Miss Wright, “that’s where they live now, poor things. I know the place, though I ain’t been up here for years. You don’t suppose, Mis’ Trimble—I ain’t seen the girls out to meetin’ all winter. I’ve re’lly been covetin’”—

“Why, yes, Rebecca, of course we could stop,” answered Mrs. Trimble heartily. 227“The exercises was over earlier ’n I expected, an’ you’re goin’ to remain over night long o’ me, you know. There won’t be no tea till we git there, so we can’t be late. I’m in the habit o’ sendin’ a basket to the Bray girls when any o’ our folks is comin’ this way, but I ain’t been to see ’em since they moved up here. Why, it must be a good deal over a year ago. I know ’t was in the late winter they had to make the move. ’Twas cruel hard, I must say, an’ if I hadn’t been down with my pleurisy fever I’d have stirred round an’ done somethin’ about it. There was a good deal o’ sickness at the time, an’—well, ’twas kind o’ rushed through, breakin’ of ’em up, an’ lots o’ folks blamed the selec’men; but when ’twas done, ’twas done, an’ nobody took holt to undo it. Ann an’ Mandy looked same ’s ever when they come to meetin’, ’long in the summer,—kind o’ wishful, perhaps. They’ve always sent me word they was gittin’ on pretty comfortable.”

“That would be their way,” said Rebecca Wright. “They never was any hand to complain, though Mandy’s less cheerful than Ann. If Mandy’d been spared such poor eyesight, an’ Ann hadn’t got her lame 228wrist that wa’n’t set right, they’d kep’ off the town fast enough. They both shed tears when they talked to me about havin’ to break up, when I went to see ’em before I went over to brother Asa’s. You see we was brought up neighbors, an’ we went to school together, the Brays an’ me. ’Twas a special Providence brought us home this road, I’ve been so covetin’ a chance to git to see ’em. My lameness hampers me.”

“I’m glad we come this way, myself,” said Mrs. Trimble.

“I’d like to see just how they fare,” Miss Rebecca Wright continued. “They give their consent to goin’ on the town because they knew they’d got to be dependent, an’ so they felt ’twould come easier for all than for a few to help ’em. They acted real dignified an’ right-minded, contrary to what most do in such cases, but they was dreadful anxious to see who would bid ’em off, town-meeting day; they did so hope ’twould be somebody right in the village. I just sat down an’ cried good when I found Abel Janes’s folks had got hold of ’em. They always had the name of bein’ slack an’ poor-spirited, an’ they did it just for what they got out o’ the town. The selectmen this 229last year ain’t what we have had. I hope they’ve been considerate about the Bray girls.”

“I should have be’n more considerate about fetchin’ of you over,” apologized Mrs. Trimble. “I’ve got my horse, an’ you’re lame-footed; ’tis too far for you to come. But time does slip away with busy folks, an’ I forgit a good deal I ought to remember.”

“There’s nobody more considerate than you be,” protested Miss Rebecca Wright.

Mrs. Trimble made no answer, but took out her whip and gently touched the sorrel horse, who walked considerably faster, but did not think it worth while to trot. It was a long, round-about way to the house, farther down the road and up a lane.

“I never had any opinion of the Bray girls’ father, leavin’ ’em as he did,” said Mrs. Trimble.

“He was much praised in his time, though there was always some said his early life hadn’t been up to the mark,” explained her companion. “He was a great favorite of our then preacher, the Reverend Daniel Longbrother. They did a good deal for the parish, but they did it their own way. Deacon Bray was one that did his part in 230the repairs without urging. You know ’twas in his time the first repairs was made, when they got out the old soundin’-board an’ them handsome square pews. It cost an awful sight o’ money, too. They hadn’t done payin’ up that debt when they set to alter it again an’ git the walls frescoed. My grandmother was one that always spoke her mind right out, an’ she was dreadful opposed to breakin’ up the square pews where she’d always set. They was countin’ up what ’twould cost in parish meetin’, an’ she riz right up an’ said ’twouldn’t cost nothin’ to let ’em stay, an’ there wa’n’t a house carpenter left in the parish that could do such nice work, an’ time would come when the great-grandchildren would give their eye-teeth to have the old meetin’-house look just as it did then. But haul the inside to pieces they would and did.”

“There come to be a real fight over it, didn’t there?” agreed Mrs. Trimble soothingly. “Well, ’twa’n’t good taste. I remember the old house well. I come here as a child to visit a cousin o’ mother’s, an’ Mr. Trimble’s folks was neighbors, an’ we was drawed to each other then, young ’s we was. Mr. Trimble spoke of it many’s the 231time,—that first time he ever see me, in a leghorn hat with a feather; ’twas one that mother had, an’ pressed over.”

“When I think of them old sermons that used to be preached in that old meetin’-house of all, I’m glad it’s altered over, so ’s not to remind folks,” said Miss Rebecca Wright, after a suitable pause. “Them old brimstone discourses, you know, Mis’ Trimble. Preachers is far more reasonable, nowadays. Why, I set an’ thought, last Sabbath, as I listened, that if old Mr. Longbrother an’ Deacon Bray could hear the difference they’d crack the ground over ’em like pole beans, an’ come right up ’long side their headstones.”

Mrs. Trimble laughed heartily, and shook the reins three or four times by way of emphasis. “There ’s no gitting round you,” she said, much pleased. “I should think Deacon Bray would want to rise, any way, if ’twas so he could, an’ knew how his poor girls was farin’. A man ought to provide for his folks he’s got to leave behind him, specially if they’re women. To be sure, they had their little home; but we’ve seen how, with all their industrious ways, they hadn’t means to keep it. I s’pose he 232thought he’d got time enough to lay by, when he give so generous in collections; but he didn’t lay by, an’ there they be. He might have took lessons from the squirrels: even them little wild creatur’s makes them their winter hoards, an’ menfolks ought to know enough if squirrels does. ‘Be just before you are generous:’ that’s what was always set for the B’s in the copy-books, when I was to school, and it often runs through my mind.”

“‘As for man, his days are as grass,’—that was for A; the two go well together,” added Miss Rebecca Wright soberly. “My good gracious, ain’t this a starved-lookin’ place? It makes me ache to think them nice Bray girls has to brook it here.”

The sorrel horse, though somewhat puzzled by an unexpected deviation from his homeward way, willingly came to a stand by the gnawed corner of the dooryard fence, which evidently served as hitching-place. Two or three ragged old hens were picking about the yard, and at last a face appeared at the kitchen window, tied up in a handkerchief, as if it were a case of toothache. By the time our friends reached the side door next this window, Mrs. Janes came disconsolately 233to open it for them, shutting it again as soon as possible, though the air felt more chilly inside the house.

“Take seats,” said Mrs. Janes briefly. “You’ll have to see me just as I be. I have been suffering these four days with the ague, and everything to do. Mr. Janes is to court, on the jury. ’Twas inconvenient to spare him. I should be pleased to have you lay off your things.”

Comfortable Mrs. Trimble looked about the cheerless kitchen, and could not think of anything to say; so she smiled blandly and shook her head in answer to the invitation. “We’ll just set a few minutes with you, to pass the time o’ day, an’ then we must go in an’ have a word with the Miss Brays, bein’ old acquaintance. It ain’t been so we could git to call on ’em before. I don’t know ’s you’re acquainted with Miss R’becca Wright. She’s been out of town a good deal.”

“I heard she was stopping over to Plainfields with her brother’s folks,” replied Mrs. Janes, rocking herself with irregular motion, as she sat close to the stove. “Got back some time in the fall, I believe?”

“Yes’m,” said Miss Rebecca, with an 234undue sense of guilt and conviction. “We’ve been to the installation over to the East Parish, an’ thought we’d stop in; we took this road home to see if ’twas any better. How is the Miss Brays gettin’ on?”

“They’re well ’s common,” answered Mrs. Janes grudgingly. “I was put out with Mr. Janes for fetchin’ of ’em here, with all I’ve got to do, an’ I own I was kind o’ surly to ’em ’long to the first of it. He gits the money from the town, an’ it helps him out; but he bid ’em off for five dollars a month, an’ we can’t do much for ’em at no such price as that. I went an’ dealt with the selec’men, an’ made ’em promise to find their firewood an’ some other things extra. They was glad to get rid o’ the matter the fourth time I went, an’ would ha’ promised ’most anything. But Mr. Janes don’t keep me half the time in oven-wood, he’s off so much, an’ we was cramped o’ room, any way. I have to store things up garrit a good deal, an’ that keeps me trampin’ right through their room. I do the best for ’em I can, Mis’ Trimble, but ’t ain’t so easy for me as ’tis for you, with all your means to do with.”

The poor woman looked pinched and miserable 235herself, though it was evident that she had no gift at house or home keeping. Mrs. Trimble’s heart was wrung with pain, as she thought of the unwelcome inmates of such a place; but she held her peace bravely, while Miss Rebecca again gave some brief information in regard to the installation.

“You go right up them back stairs,” the hostess directed at last. “I’m glad some o’ you church folks has seen fit to come an’ visit ’em. There ain’t been nobody here this long spell, an’ they’ve aged a sight since they come. They always send down a taste out of your baskets, Mis’ Trimble, an’ I relish it, I tell you. I’ll shut the door after you, if you don’t object. I feel every draught o’ cold air.”

“I’ve always heard she was a great hand to make a poor mouth. Wa’n’t she from somewheres up Parsley way?” whispered Miss Rebecca, as they stumbled in the half-light.

“Poor meechin’ body, wherever she come from,” replied Mrs. Trimble, as she knocked at the door.

There was silence for a moment after this unusual sound; then one of the Bray sisters opened the door. The eager guests stared 236into a small, low room, brown with age, and gray, too, as if former dust and cobwebs could not be made wholly to disappear. The two elderly women who stood there looked like captives. Their withered faces wore a look of apprehension, and the room itself was more bare and plain than was fitting to their evident refinement of character and self-respect. There was an uncovered small table in the middle of the floor, with some crackers on a plate; and, for some reason or other, this added a great deal to the general desolation.

But Miss Ann Bray, the elder sister, who carried her right arm in a sling, with piteously drooping fingers, gazed at the visitors with radiant joy. She had not seen them arrive.

The one window gave only the view at the back of the house, across the fields, and their coming was indeed a surprise. The next minute she was laughing and crying together. “Oh, sister!” she said, “if here ain’t our dear Mis’ Trimble!—an’ my heart o’ goodness, ’tis ’Becca Wright, too! What dear good creatur’s you be! I’ve felt all day as if something good was goin’ to happen, an’ was just sayin’ to myself 237’twas most sundown now, but I wouldn’t let on to Mandany I’d give up hope quite yet. You see, the scissors stuck in the floor this very mornin’ an’ it’s always a reliable sign. There, I’ve got to kiss ye both again!”

“I don’t know where we can all set,” lamented sister Mandana. “There ain’t but the one chair an’ the bed; t’ other chair’s too rickety; an’ we’ve been promised another these ten days; but first they’ve forgot it, an’ next Mis’ Janes can’t spare it,—one excuse an’ another. I am goin’ to git a stump o’ wood an’ nail a board on to it, when I can git outdoor again,” said Mandana, in a plaintive voice. “There, I ain’t goin’ to complain o’ nothin’, now you’ve come,” she added; and the guests sat down, Mrs. Trimble, as was proper, in the one chair.

“We’ve sat on the bed many’s the time with you, ’Becca, an’ talked over our girl nonsense, ain’t we? You know where ’twas—in the little back bedroom we had when we was girls, an’ used to peek out at our beaux through the strings o’ mornin’-glories,” laughed Ann Bray delightedly, her thin face shining more and more with joy. 238“I brought some o’ them mornin’-glory seeds along when we come away, we’d raised ’em so many years; an’ we got ’em started all right, but the hens found ’em out. I declare I chased them poor hens, foolish as ’twas; but the mornin’-glories I’d counted on a sight to remind me o’ home. You see, our debts was so large, after my long sickness an’ all, that we didn’t feel ’twas right to keep back anything we could help from the auction.”

It was impossible for any one to speak for a moment or two; the sisters felt their own uprooted condition afresh, and their guests for the first time really comprehended the piteous contrast between that neat little village house, which now seemed a palace of comfort, and this cold, unpainted upper room in the remote Janes farmhouse. It was an unwelcome thought to Mrs. Trimble that the well-to-do town of Hampden could provide no better for its poor than this, and her round face flushed with resentment and the shame of personal responsibility. “The girls shall be well settled in the village before another winter, if I pay their board myself,” she made an inward resolution, and took another almost tearful look at the broken 239stove, the miserable bed, and the sisters’ one hair-covered trunk, on which Mandana was sitting. But the poor place was filled with a golden spirit of hospitality.

Rebecca was again discoursing eloquently of the installation; it was so much easier to speak of general subjects, and the sisters had evidently been longing to hear some news. Since the late summer they had not been to church, and presently Mrs. Trimble asked the reason.

“Now, don’t you go to pouring out our woes, Mandy!” begged little old Ann, looking shy and almost girlish, and as if she insisted upon playing that life was still all before them and all pleasure. “Don’t you go to spoilin’ their visit with our complaints! They know well ’s we do that changes must come, an’ we’d been so wonted to our home things that this come hard at first; but then they felt for us, I know just as well’s can be. ’Twill soon be summer again, an’ ’tis real pleasant right out in the fields here, when there ain’t too hot a spell. I’ve got to know a sight o’ singin’ birds since we come.”

“Give me the folks I’ve always known,” sighed the younger sister, who looked older than Miss Ann, and less even-tempered. 240“You may have your birds, if you want ’em. I do re’lly long to go to meetin’ an’ see folks go by up the aisle. Now, I will speak of it, Ann, whatever you say. We need, each of us, a pair o’ good stout shoes an’ rubbers,—ours are all wore out; an’ we’ve asked an’ asked, an’ they never think to bring ’em, an’”—

Poor old Mandana, on the trunk, covered her face with her arms and sobbed aloud. The elder sister stood over her, and patted her on the thin shoulder like a child, and tried to comfort her. It crossed Mrs. Trimble’s mind that it was not the first time one had wept and the other had comforted. The sad scene must have been repeated many times in that long, drear winter. She would see them forever after in her mind as fixed as a picture, and her own tears fell fast.

“You didn’t see Mis’ Janes’s cunning little boy, the next one to the baby, did you?” asked Ann Bray, turning round quickly at last, and going cheerfully on with the conversation. “Now, hush, Mandy, dear; they’ll think you’re childish! He’s a dear, friendly little creatur’, an’ likes to stay with us a good deal, though we feel ’s if 241it ’twas too cold for him, now we are waitin’ to get us more wood.”

“When I think of the acres o’ woodland in this town!” groaned Rebecca Wright. “I believe I’m goin’ to preach next Sunday, ’stead o’ the minister, an’ I’ll make the sparks fly. I’ve always heard the saying, ‘What’s everybody’s business is nobody’s business,’ an’ I’ve come to believe it.”

“Now, don’t you, ’Becca. You’ve happened on a kind of a poor time with us, but we’ve got more belongings than you see here, an’ a good large cluset, where we can store those things there ain’t room to have about. You an’ Miss Trimble have happened on a kind of poor day, you know. Soon’s I git me some stout shoes an’ rubbers, as Mandy says, I can fetch home plenty o’ little dry boughs o’ pine; you remember I was always a great hand to roam in the woods? If we could only have a front room, so ’t we could look out on the road an’ see passin’, an’ was shod for meetin’, I don’ know ’s we should complain. Now we’re just goin’ to give you what we’ve got, an’ make out with a good welcome. We make more tea ’n we want in the mornin’, an’ then let the fire go down, since ’t has been so mild. 242We’ve got a good cluset” (disappearing as she spoke), “an’ I know this to be good tea, ’cause it’s some o’ yourn, Mis’ Trimble. An’ here’s our sprigged chiny cups that R’becca knows by sight, if Mis’ Trimble don’t. We kep’ out four of ’em, an’ put the even half dozen with the rest of the auction stuff. I’ve often wondered who’d got ’em, but I never asked, for fear ’twould be somebody that would distress us. They was mother’s, you know.”

The four cups were poured, and the little table pushed to the bed, where Rebecca Wright still sat, and Mandana, wiping her eyes, came and joined her. Mrs. Trimble sat in her chair at the end, and Ann trotted about the room in pleased content for a while, and in and out of the closet, as if she still had much to do; then she came and stood opposite Mrs. Trimble. She was very short and small, and there was no painful sense of her being obliged to stand. The four cups were not quite full of cold tea, but there was a clean old tablecloth folded double, and a plate with three pairs of crackers neatly piled, and a small—it must be owned, a very small—piece of hard white cheese. Then, for a treat, in a glass dish, 243there was a little preserved peach, the last—Miss Rebecca knew it instinctively—of the household stores brought from their old home. It was very sugary, this bit of peach; and as she helped her guests and sister Mandy, Miss Ann Bray said, half unconsciously, as she often had said with less reason in the old days, “Our preserves ain’t so good as usual this year; this is beginning to candy.” Both the guests protested, while Rebecca added that the taste of it carried her back, and made her feel young again. The Brays had always managed to keep one or two peach-trees alive in their corner of a garden. “I’ve been keeping this preserve for a treat,” said her friend. “I’m glad to have you eat some, ’Becca. Last summer I often wished you was home an’ could come an’ see us, ’stead o’ being away off to Plainfields.”

The crackers did not taste too dry. Miss Ann took the last of the peach on her own cracker; there could not have been quite a small spoonful, after the others were helped, but she asked them first if they would not have some more. Then there was a silence, and in the silence a wave of tender feeling rose high in the hearts of the four elderly 244women. At this moment the setting sun flooded the poor plain room with light; the unpainted wood was all of a golden-brown, and Ann Bray, with her gray hair and aged face, stood at the head of the table in a kind of aureole. Mrs. Trimble’s face was all aquiver as she looked at her; she thought of the text about two or three being gathered together, and was half afraid.

“I believe we ought to ’ve asked Mis’ Janes if she wouldn’t come up,” said Ann. “She’s real good feelin’, but she’s had it very hard, an gits discouraged. I can’t find that she’s ever had anything real pleasant to look back to, as we have. There, next time we’ll make a good heartenin’ time for her too.”

The sorrel horse had taken a long nap by the gnawed fence-rail, and the cool air after sundown made him impatient to be gone. The two friends jolted homeward in the gathering darkness, through the stiffening mud, and neither Mrs. Trimble nor Rebecca Wright said a word until they were out of sight as well as out of sound of the Janes house. Time must elapse before they could reach a more familiar part of the road and 245resume conversation on its natural level.

“I consider myself to blame,” insisted Mrs. Trimble at last. “I haven’t no words of accusation for nobody else, an’ I ain’t one to take comfort in calling names to the board o’ selec’men. I make no reproaches, an’ I take it all on my own shoulders; but I’m goin’ to stir about me, I tell you! I shall begin early to-morrow. They’re goin’ back to their own house,— it’s been standin’ empty all winter,—an’ the town’s goin’ to give ’em the rent an’ what firewood they need; it won’t come to more than the board’s payin’ out now. An’ you an’ me’ll take this same horse an’ wagon, an’ ride an go afoot by turns, an’ git means enough together to buy back their furniture an’ whatever was sold at that plaguey auction; an’ then we’ll put it all back, an’ tell ’em they’ve got to move to a new place, an’ just carry ’em right back again where they come from. An’ don’t you never tell, R’becca, but here I be a widow woman, layin’ up what I make from my farm for nobody knows who, an’ I’m goin’ to do for them Bray girls all I’m a mind to. I should be sca’t to wake up in heaven, an’ hear anybody there ask how the Bray girls was. Don’t talk to me about the 246town o’ Hampden, an’ don’t ever let me hear the name o’ town poor! I’m ashamed to go home an’ see what’s set out for supper. I wish I’d brought ’em right along.”

“I was goin’ to ask if we couldn’t git the new doctor to go up an’ do somethin’ for poor Ann’s arm,” said Miss Rebecca. “They say he’s very smart. If she could get so ’s to braid straw or hook rugs again, she’d soon be earnin’ a little somethin’. An’ may be he could do somethin’ for Mandy’s eyes. They did use to live so neat an’ ladylike. Somehow I couldn’t speak to tell ’em there that ’twas I bought them six best cups an’ saucers, time of the auction; they went very low, as everything else did, an’ I thought I could save it some other way. They shall have ’em back an’ welcome. You’re real whole-hearted, Mis’ Trimble. I expect Ann’ll be sayin’ that her father’s child’n wa’n’t goin’ to be left desolate, an’ that all the bread he cast on the water’s comin’ back through you.”

“I don’t care what she says, dear creatur’!” exclaimed Mrs. Trimble. “I’m full o’ regrets I took time for that installation, an’ set there seepin’ in a lot o’ talk this whole day long, except for its kind of bringin’ us 247to the Bray girls. I wish to my heart ’twas to-morrow mornin’ a’ready, an’ I a-startin’ for the selec’men.”

THE HILTONS’ HOLIDAY. — I. — II.

There was a bright, full moon in the clear sky, and the sunset was still shining faintly in the west. Dark woods stood all about the old Hilton farmhouse, save down the hill, westward, where lay the shadowy fields which John Hilton, and his father before him, had cleared and tilled with much toil,—the small fields to which they had given the industry and even affection of their honest lives.

John Hilton was sitting on the doorstep of his house. As he moved his head in and out of the shadows, turning now and then to speak to his wife, who sat just within the doorway, one could see his good face, rough and somewhat unkempt, as if he were indeed a creature of the shady woods and brown earth, instead of the noisy town. It was late in the long spring evening, and he had just come from the lower field as cheerful as a boy, proud of having finished the planting of his potatoes.

249“I had to do my last row mostly by feelin’,” he said to his wife. “I’m proper glad I pushed through, an’ went back an’ ended off after supper. ’Twould have taken me a good part o’ to-morrow mornin’, an’ broke my day.”

“’Tain’t no use for ye to work yourself all to pieces, John,” answered the woman quickly. “I declare it does seem harder than ever that we couldn’t have kep’ our boy; he’d been comin’ fourteen years old this fall, most a grown man, and he’d work right ’longside of ye now the whole time.”

“’Twas hard to lose him; I do seem to miss little John,” said the father sadly. “I expect there was reasons why ’twas best. I feel able an’ smart to work; my father was a girt strong man, an’ a monstrous worker afore me. ’Tain’t that; but I was thinkin’ by myself to-day what a sight o’ company the boy would ha’ been. You know, small ’s he was, how I could trust to leave him anywheres with the team, and how he’d beseech to go with me wherever I was goin’; always right in my tracks I used to tell ’em. Poor little John, for all he was so young he had a great deal o’ judgment; he’d ha’ made a likely man.”

250The mother sighed heavily as she sat within the shadow.

“But then there’s the little girls, a sight o’ help an’ company,” urged the father eagerly, as if it were wrong to dwell upon sorrow and loss. “Katy, she’s most as good as a boy, except that she ain’t very rugged. She’s a real little farmer, she’s helped me a sight this spring; an’ you’ve got Susan Ellen, that makes a complete little housekeeper for ye as far as she’s learnt. I don’t see but we’re better off than most folks, each on us having a workmate.”

“That’s so, John,” acknowledged Mrs. Hilton wistfully, beginning to rock steadily in her straight, splint-bottomed chair. It was always a good sign when she rocked.

“Where be the little girls so late?” asked their father. “’Tis gettin’ long past eight o’clock. I don’t know when we’ve all set up so late, but it’s so kind o’ summer-like an’ pleasant. Why, where be they gone?”

“I’ve told ye; only over to Becker’s folks,” answered the mother. “I don’t see myself what keeps ’em so late; they beseeched me after supper till I let ’em go. They’re all in a dazzle with the new teacher; 251she asked ’em to come over. They say she’s unusual smart with ’rethmetic, but she has a kind of a gorpen look to me. She’s goin’ to give Katy some pieces for her doll, but I told Katy she ought to be ashamed wantin’ dolls’ pieces, big as she’s gettin’ to be. I don’t know ’s she ought, though; she ain’t but nine this summer.”

“Let her take her comfort,” said the kind-hearted man. “Them things draws her to the teacher, an’ makes them acquainted. Katy’s shy with new folks, more so ’n Susan Ellen, who’s of the business kind. Katy’s shy-feelin’ and wishful.”

“I don’t know but she is,” agreed the mother slowly. “Ain’t it sing’lar how well acquainted you be with that one, an’ I with Susan Ellen? ’Twas always so from the first. I’m doubtful sometimes our Katy ain’t one that’ll be like to get married—anyways not about here. She lives right with herself, but Susan Ellen ain’t nothin’ when she’s alone, she’s always after company; all the boys is waitin’ on her a’ready. I ain’t afraid but she’ll take her pick when the time comes. I expect to see Susan Ellen well settled,—she feels grown up now,—but Katy don’t care one mite ’bout none o’ 252them things. She wants to be rovin’ out o’ doors. I do believe she’d stand an’ hark to a bird the whole forenoon.”

“Perhaps she’ll grow up to be a teacher,” suggested John Hilton. “She takes to her book more ’n the other one. I should like one on ’em to be a teacher same ’s my mother was. They’re good girls as anybody’s got.”

“So they be,” said the mother, with unusual gentleness, and the creak of her rocking-chair was heard, regular as the ticking of a clock. The night breeze stirred in the great woods, and the sound of a brook that went falling down the hillside grew louder and louder. Now and then one could hear the plaintive chirp of a bird. The moon glittered with whiteness like a winter moon, and shone upon the low-roofed house until its small window-panes gleamed like silver, and one could almost see the colors of a blooming bush of lilac that grew in a sheltered angle by the kitchen door. There was an incessant sound of frogs in the lowlands.

“Be you sound asleep, John?” asked the wife presently.

“I don’t know but what I was a’most,” said the tired man, starting a little. “I should laugh if I was to fall sound asleep 253right here on the step; ’tis the bright night, I expect, makes my eyes feel heavy, an’ ’tis so peaceful. I was up an’ dressed a little past four an’ out to work. Well, well!” and he laughed sleepily and rubbed his eyes. “Where’s the little girls? I’d better step along an’ meet ’em.”

“I wouldn’t just yet; they’ll get home all right, but ’tis late for ’em certain. I don’t want ’em keepin’ Mis’ Becker’s folks up neither. There, le’ ’s wait a few minutes,” urged Mrs. Hilton.

“I’ve be’n a-thinkin’ all day I’d like to give the child’n some kind of a treat,” said the father, wide awake now. “I hurried up my work ’cause I had it so in mind. They don’t have the opportunities some do, an’ I want ’em to know the world, an’ not stay right here on the farm like a couple o’ bushes.”

“They’re a sight better off not to be so full o’ notions as some is,” protested the mother suspiciously.

“Certain,” answered the farmer; “but they’re good, bright child’n, an’ commencin’ to take a sight o’ notice. I want ’em to have all we can give ’em. I want ’em to see how other folks does things.”

254“Why, so do I,”—here the rocking-chair stopped ominously,—“but so long ’s they’re contented”—

“Contented ain’t all in this world; hopper-toads may have that quality an’ spend all their time a-blinkin’. I don’t know ’s bein’ contented is all there is to look for in a child. Ambition’s somethin’ to me.”

“Now you’ve got your mind on to some plot or other.” (The rocking-chair began to move again.) “Why can’t you talk right out?”

“’Tain’t nothin’ special,” answered the good man, a little ruffled; he was never prepared for his wife’s mysterious powers of divination. “Well there, you do find things out the master! I only thought perhaps I’d take ’em to-morrow, an’ go off somewhere if ’twas a good day. I’ve been promisin’ for a good while I’d take ’em to Topham Corners; they’ve never been there since they was very small.”

“I believe you want a good time yourself. You ain’t never got over bein’ a boy.” Mrs. Hilton seemed much amused. “There, go if you want to an’ take ’em; they’ve got their summer hats an’ new dresses. I don’t know o’ nothin’ that stands in the 255way. I should sense it better if there was a circus or anythin’ to go to. Why don’t you wait an’ let the girls pick ’em some strawberries or nice ros’berries, and then they could take an’ sell ’em to the stores?”

John Hilton reflected deeply. “I should like to get me some good yellow-turnip seed to plant late. I ain’t more ’n satisfied with what I’ve been gettin’ o’ late years o’ Ira Speed. An’ I’m goin’ to provide me with a good hoe; mine ’s gettin’ wore out an’ all shackly. I can’t seem to fix it good.”

“Them’s excuses,” observed Mrs. Hilton, with friendly tolerance. “You just cover up the hoe with somethin’, if you get it—I would. Ira Speed ’s so jealous he’ll remember it of you this twenty year, your goin’ an’ buyin’ a new hoe o’ anybody but him.”

“I’ve always thought ’twas a free country,” said John Hilton soberly. “I don’t want to vex Ira neither; he favors us all he can in trade. ’Tis difficult for him to spare a cent, but he’s as honest as daylight.”

At this moment there was a sudden sound of young voices, and a pair of young figures came out from the shadow of the woods into the moonlighted open space. An old cock 256crowed loudly from his perch in the shed, as if he were a herald of royalty. The little girls were hand in hand, and a brisk young dog capered about them as they came.

“Wa’n’t it dark gittin’ home through the woods this time o’ night?” asked the mother hastily, and not without reproach.

“I don’t love to have you gone so late; mother an’ me was timid about ye, and you’ve kep’ Mis’ Becker’s folks up, I expect,” said their father regretfully. “I don’t want to have it said that my little girls ain’t got good manners.”

“The teacher had a party,” chirped Susan Ellen, the elder of the two children. “Goin’ home from school she asked the Grover boys, an’ Mary an’ Sarah Speed. An’ Mis’ Becker was real pleasant to us: she passed round some cake, an’ handed us sap sugar on one of her best plates, an’ we played games an’ sung some pieces too. Mis’ Becker thought we did real well. I can pick out most of a tune on the cabinet organ; teacher says she’ll give me lessons.”

“I want to know, dear!” exclaimed John Hilton.

“Yes, an’ we played Copenhagen, an’ 257took sides spellin’, an’ Katy beat everybody spellin’ there was there.”

Katy had not spoken; she was not so strong as her sister, and while Susan Ellen stood a step or two away addressing her eager little audience, Katy had seated herself close to her father on the doorstep. He put his arm around her shoulders, and drew her close to his side, where she stayed.

“Ain’t you got nothin’ to tell, daughter?” he asked, looking down fondly; and Katy gave a pleased little sigh for answer.

“Tell ’em what’s goin’ to be the last day o’ school, and about our trimmin’ the schoolhouse,” she said; and Susan Ellen gave the programme in most spirited fashion.

“’Twill be a great time,” said the mother, when she had finished. “I don’t see why folks wants to go trapesin’ off to strange places when such things is happenin’ right about ’em.” But the children did not observe her mysterious air. “Come, you must step yourselves right to bed!”

They all went into the dark, warm house; the bright moon shone upon it steadily all night, and the lilac flowers were shaken by no breath of wind until the early dawn.

The Hiltons always waked early. So did their neighbors, the crows and song-sparrows and robins, the light-footed foxes and squirrels in the woods. When John Hilton waked, before five o’clock, an hour later than usual because he had sat up so late, he opened the house door and came out into the yard, crossing the short green turf hurriedly as if the day were too far spent for any loitering. The magnitude of the plan for taking a whole day of pleasure confronted him seriously, but the weather was fair, and his wife, whose disapproval could not have been set aside, had accepted and even smiled upon the great project. It was inevitable now, that he and the children should go to Topham Corners. Mrs. Hilton had the pleasure of waking them, and telling the news.

In a few minutes they came frisking out to talk over the great plans. The cattle were already fed, and their father was milking. The only sign of high festivity was the wagon pulled out into the yard, with both seats put in as if it were Sunday; but Mr. Hilton still wore his every-day clothes, and 259Susan Ellen suffered instantly from disappointment.

“Ain’t we goin’, father?” she asked complainingly; but he nodded and smiled at her, even though the cow, impatient to get to pasture, kept whisking her rough tail across his face. He held his head down and spoke cheerfully, in spite of this vexation.

“Yes, sister, we’re goin’ certain’, an’ goin’ to have a great time too.” Susan Ellen thought that he seemed like a boy at that delightful moment, and felt new sympathy and pleasure at once. “You go an’ help mother about breakfast an’ them things; we want to get off quick ’s we can. You coax mother now, both on ye, an’ see if she won’t go with us.”

“She said she wouldn’t be hired to,” responded Susan Ellen. “She says it’s goin’ to be hot, an’ she’s laid out to go over an’ see how her aunt Tamsen Brooks is this afternoon.”

The father gave a little sigh; then he took heart again. The truth was that his wife made light of the contemplated pleasure, and, much as he usually valued her companionship and approval, he was sure that they should have a better time without her. 260It was impossible, however, not to feel guilty of disloyalty at the thought. Even though she might be completely unconscious of his best ideals, he only loved her and the ideals the more, and bent his energies to satisfying her indefinite expectations. His wife still kept much of that youthful beauty which Susan Ellen seemed likely to reproduce.

An hour later the best wagon was ready, and the great expedition set forth. The little dog sat apart, and barked as if it fell entirely upon him to voice the general excitement. Both seats were in the wagon, but the empty place testified to Mrs. Hilton’s unyielding disposition. She had wondered why one broad seat would not do, but John Hilton meekly suggested that the wagon looked better with both. The little girls sat on the back seat dressed alike in their Sunday hats of straw with blue ribbons, and their little plaid shawls pinned neatly about their small shoulders. They wore gray thread gloves, and sat very straight. Susan Ellen was half a head the taller, but otherwise, from behind, they looked much alike. As for their father, he was in his Sunday best,—a plain black coat, and a winter 261hat of felt, which was heavy and rusty-looking for that warm early summer day. He had it in mind to buy a new straw hat at Topham, so that this with the turnip seed and the hoe made three important reasons for going.

“Remember an’ lay off your shawls when you get there, an’ carry them over your arms,” said the mother, clucking like an excited hen to her chickens. “They’ll do to keep the dust off your new dresses goin’ an’ comin’. An’ when you eat your dinners don’t get spots on you, an’ don’t point at folks as you ride by, an’ stare, or they’ll know you come from the country. An’ John, you call into Cousin Ad’line Marlow’s an’ see how they all be, an’ tell her I expect her over certain to stop awhile before hayin’. It always eases her phthisic to git up here on the high land, an’ I’ve got a new notion about doin’ over her best-room carpet sence I see her that’ll save rippin’ one breadth. An’ don’t come home all wore out; an’, John, don’t you go an’ buy me no kickshaws to fetch home. I ain’t a child, an’ you ain’t got no money to waste. I expect you’ll go, like ’s not, an’ buy you some kind of a foolish boy’s hat; do look 262an’ see if it’s reasonable good straw, an’ won’t splinter all off round the edge. An’ you mind, John”—

“Yes, yes, hold on!” cried John impatiently; then he cast a last affectionate, reassuring look at her face, flushed with the hurry and responsibility of starting them off in proper shape. “I wish you was goin’ too,” he said, smiling. “I do so!” Then the old horse started, and they went out at the bars, and began the careful long descent of the hill. The young dog, tethered to the lilac-bush, was frantic with piteous appeals; the little girls piped their eager good-bys again and again, and their father turned many times to look back and wave his hand. As for their mother, she stood alone and watched them out of sight.

There was one place far out on the high-road where she could catch a last glimpse of the wagon, and she waited what seemed a very long time until it appeared and then was lost to sight again behind a low hill. “They’re nothin’ but a pack o’ child’n together,” she said aloud; and then felt lonelier than she expected. She even stooped and patted the unresigned little dog as she passed him, going into the house.

263The occasion was so much more important than any one had foreseen that both the little girls were speechless. It seemed at first like going to church in new clothes, or to a funeral; they hardly knew how to behave at the beginning of a whole day of pleasure. They made grave bows at such persons of their acquaintance as happened to be straying in the road. Once or twice they stopped before a farmhouse, while their father talked an inconsiderately long time with some one about the crops and the weather, and even dwelt upon town business and the doings of the selectmen, which might be talked of at any time. The explanations that he gave of their excursion seemed quite unnecessary. It was made entirely clear that he had a little business to do at Topham Corners, and thought he had better give the little girls a ride; they had been very steady at school, and he had finished planting, and could take the day as well as not. Soon, however, they all felt as if such an excursion were an every-day affair, and Susan Ellen began to ask eager questions, while Katy silently sat apart enjoying herself as she never had done before. She liked to see the strange houses, and the children who 264belonged to them; it was delightful to find flowers that she knew growing all along the road, no matter how far she went from home. Each small homestead looked its best and pleasantest, and shared the exquisite beauty that early summer made,—shared the luxury of greenness and floweriness that decked the rural world. There was an early peony or a late lilac in almost every dooryard.

It was seventeen miles to Topham. After a while they seemed very far from home, having left the hills far behind, and descended to a great level country with fewer tracts of woodland, and wider fields where the crops were much more forward. The houses were all painted, and the roads were smoother and wider. It had been so pleasant driving along that Katy dreaded going into the strange town when she first caught sight of it, though Susan Ellen kept asking with bold fretfulness if they were not almost there. They counted the steeples of four churches, and their father presently showed them the Topham Academy, where their grandmother once went to school, and told them that perhaps some day they would go there too. Katy’s heart gave a strange 265leap; it was such a tremendous thing to think of, but instantly the suggestion was transformed for her into one of the certainties of life. She looked with solemn awe at the tall belfry, and the long rows of windows in the front of the academy, there where it stood high and white among the clustering trees. She hoped that they were going to drive by, but something forbade her taking the responsibility of saying so.

Soon the children found themselves among the crowded village houses. Their father turned to look at them with affectionate solicitude.

“Now sit up straight and appear pretty,” he whispered to them. “We’re among the best people now, an’ I want folks to think well of you.”

“I guess we’re as good as they be,” remarked Susan Ellen, looking at some innocent passers-by with dark suspicion, but Katy tried indeed to sit straight, and folded her hands prettily in her lap, and wished with all her heart to be pleasing for her father’s sake. Just then an elderly woman saw the wagon and the sedate party it carried, and smiled so kindly that it seemed to Katy as if Topham Corners had welcomed 266and received them. She smiled back again as if this hospitable person were an old friend, and entirely forgot that the eyes of all Topham had been upon her.

“There, now we’re coming to an elegant house that I want you to see; you’ll never forget it,” said John Hilton. “It’s where Judge Masterson lives, the great lawyer; the handsomest house in the county, everybody says.”

“Do you know him, father?” asked Susan Ellen.

“I do,” answered John Hilton proudly. “Him and my mother went to school together in their young days, and were always called the two best scholars of their time. The judge called to see her once; he stopped to our house to see her when I was a boy. An’ then, some years ago—you’ve heard me tell how I was on the jury, an’ when he heard my name spoken he looked at me sharp, and asked if I wa’n’t the son of Catharine Winn, an’ spoke most beautiful of your grandmother, an’ how well he remembered their young days together.”

“I like to hear about that,” said Katy.

“She had it pretty hard, I’m afraid, up on the old farm. She was keepin’ school 267in our district when father married her—that’s the main reason I backed ’em down when they wanted to tear the old schoolhouse all to pieces,” confided John Hilton, turning eagerly. “They all say she lived longer up here on the hill than she could anywhere, but she never had her health. I wa’n’t but a boy when she died. Father an’ me lived alone afterward till the time your mother come; ’twas a good while, too; I wa’n’t married so young as some. ’Twas lonesome, I tell you; father was plumb discouraged losin’ of his wife, an’ her long sickness an’ all set him back, an’ we’d work all day on the land an’ never say a word. I s’pose ’tis bein’ so lonesome early in life that makes me so pleased to have some nice girls growin’ up round me now.”

There was a tone in her father’s voice that drew Katy’s heart toward him with new affection. She dimly understood, but Susan Ellen was less interested. They had often heard this story before, but to one child it was always new and to the other old. Susan Ellen was apt to think it tiresome to hear about her grandmother, who, being dead, was hardly worth talking about.

“There’s Judge Masterson’s place,” said 268their father in an every-day manner, as they turned a corner, and came into full view of the beautiful old white house standing behind its green trees and terraces and lawns. The children had never imagined anything so stately and fine, and even Susan Ellen exclaimed with pleasure. At that moment they saw an old gentleman, who carried himself with great dignity, coming slowly down the wide box-bordered path toward the gate.

“There he is now, there’s the judge!” whispered John Hilton excitedly, reining his horse quickly to the green roadside. “He’s goin’ down-town to his office; we can wait right here an’ see him. I can’t expect him to remember me; it’s been a good many years. Now you are goin’ to see the great Judge Masterson!”

There was a quiver of expectation in their hearts. The judge stopped at his gate, hesitating a moment before he lifted the latch, and glanced up the street at the country wagon with its two prim little girls on the back seat, and the eager man who drove. They seemed to be waiting for something; the old horse was nibbling at the fresh roadside grass. The judge was used to being 269looked at with interest, and responded now with a smile as he came out to the sidewalk, and unexpectedly turned their way. Then he suddenly lifted his hat with grave politeness, and came directly toward them.

“Good-morning, Mr. Hilton,” he said. “I am very glad to see you, sir;” and Mr. Hilton, the little girls’ own father, took off his hat with equal courtesy, and bent forward to shake hands.

Susan Ellen cowered and wished herself away, but little Katy sat straighter than ever, with joy in her father’s pride and pleasure shining in her pale, flower-like little face.

“These are your daughters, I am sure,” said the old gentleman kindly, taking Susan Ellen’s limp and reluctant hand; but when he looked at Katy, his face brightened. “How she recalls your mother!” he said with great feeling. “I am glad to see this dear child. You must come to see me with your father, my dear,” he added, still looking at her. “Bring both the little girls, and let them run about the old garden; the cherries are just getting ripe,” said Judge Masterson hospitably. “Perhaps you will 270have time to stop this afternoon as you go home?”

“I should call it a great pleasure if you would come and see us again some time. You may be driving our way, sir,” said John Hilton.

“Not very often in these days,” answered the old judge. “I thank you for the kind invitation. I should like to see the fine view again from your hill westward. Can I serve you in any way while you are in town? Good-by, my little friends!”

Then they parted, but not before Katy, the shy Katy, whose band the judge still held unconsciously while he spoke, had reached forward as he said good-by, and lifted her face to kiss him. She could not have told why, except that she felt drawn to something in the serious, worn face. For the first time in her life the child had felt the charm of manners; perhaps she owned a kinship between that which made him what he was, and the spark of nobleness and purity in her own simple soul. She turned again and again to look back at him as they drove away.

“Now you have seen one of the first gentlemen in the country,” said their father. 271“It was worth comin’ twice as far”—but he did not say any more, nor turn as usual to look in the children’s faces.

In the chief business street of Topham a great many country wagons like the Hiltons’ were fastened to the posts, and there seemed to our holiday-makers to be a great deal of noise and excitement.

“Now I’ve got to do my errands, and we can let the horse rest and feed,” said John Hilton. “I’ll slip his headstall right off, an’ put on his halter. I’m goin’ to buy him a real good treat o’ oats. First we’ll go an’ buy me my straw hat; I feel as if this one looked a little past to wear in Topham. We’ll buy the things we want, an’ then we’ll walk all along the street, so you can look in the windows an’ see the han’some things, same’s your mother likes to. What was it mother told you about your shawls?”

“To take ’em off an’ carry ’em over our arms,” piped Susan Ellen, without comment, but in the interest of alighting and finding themselves afoot upon the pavement the shawls were forgotten. The children stood at the doorway of a shop while their father 272went inside, and they tried to see what the Topham shapes of bonnets were like, as their mother had advised them; but everything was exciting and confusing, and they could arrive at no decision. When Mr. Hilton came out with a hat in his hand to be seen in a better light, Katy whispered that she wished he would buy a shiny one like Judge Masterson’s; but her father only smiled and shook his head, and said that they were plain folks, he and Katy. There were dry-goods for sale in the same shop, and a young clerk who was measuring linen kindly pulled off some pretty labels with gilded edges and gay pictures, and gave them to the little girls, to their exceeding joy. He may have had small sisters at home, this friendly lad, for he took pains to find two pretty blue boxes besides, and was rewarded by their beaming gratitude.

It was a famous day; they even became used to seeing so many people pass. The village was full of its morning activity, and Susan Ellen gained a new respect for her father, and an increased sense of her own consequence, because even in Topham several persons knew him and called him familiarly by name. The meeting with an old man 273who had once been a neighbor seemed to give Mr. Hilton the greatest pleasure. The old man called to them from a house doorway as they were passing, and they all went in. The children seated themselves wearily on the wooden step, but their father shook his old friend eagerly by the hand, and declared that he was delighted to see him so well and enjoying the fine weather.

“Oh, yes,” said the old man, in a feeble, quavering voice, “I’m astonishin’ well for my age. I don’t complain, John, I don’t complain.”

They talked long together of people whom they had known in the past, and Katy, being a little tired, was glad to rest, and sat still with her hands folded, looking about the front yard. There were some kinds of flowers that she never had seen before.

“This is the one that looks like my mother,” her father said, and touched Katy’s shoulder to remind her to stand up and let herself be seen. “Judge Masterson saw the resemblance; we met him at his gate this morning.”

“Yes, she certain does look like your mother, John,” said the old man, looking pleasantly at Katy, who found that she liked him 274better than at first. “She does, certain; the best of young folks is, they remind us of the old ones. ’Tis nateral to cling to life, folks say, but for me, I git impatient at times. Most everybody’s gone now, an’ I want to be goin’. ’Tis somethin’ before me, an’ I want to have it over with. I want to be there ’long o’ the rest o’ the folks. I expect to last quite a while though; I may see ye couple o’ times more, John.”

John Hilton responded cheerfully, and the children were urged to pick some flowers. The old man awed them with his impatience to be gone. There was such a townful of people about him, and he seemed as lonely as if he were the last survivor of a former world. Until that moment they had felt as if everything were just beginning.

“Now I want to buy somethin’ pretty for your mother,” said Mr. Hilton, as they went soberly away down the street, the children keeping fast hold of his hands. “By now the old horse will have eat his dinner and had a good rest, so pretty soon we can jog along home. I’m goin’ to take you round by the academy, and the old North Meetinghouse where Dr. Barstow used to preach. Can’t you think o’ somethin’ that your 275mother ’d want?” he asked suddenly, confronted by a man’s difficulty of choice.

“She was talkin’ about wantin’ a new pepper-box, one day; the top o’ the old one won’t stay on,” suggested Susan Ellen, with delightful readiness. “Can’t we have some candy, father?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said John Hilton, smiling and swinging her hand to and fro as they walked. “I feel as if some would be good myself. What’s all this?” They were passing a photographer’s doorway with its enticing array of portraits. “I do declare!” he exclaimed excitedly, “I’m goin’ to have our pictures taken; ’twill please your mother more ’n a little.”

This was, perhaps, the greatest triumph of the day, except the delightful meeting with the judge; they sat in a row, with the father in the middle, and there was no doubt as to the excellence of the likeness. The best hats had to be taken off because they cast a shadow, but they were not missed, as their owners had feared. Both Susan Ellen and Katy looked their brightest and best; their eager young faces would forever shine there; the joy of the holiday was mirrored in the little picture. They did not know why their 276father was so pleased with it; they would not know until age had dowered them with the riches of association and remembrance.

Just at nightfall the Hiltons reached home again, tired out and happy. Katy had climbed over into the front seat beside her father, because that was always her place when they went to church on Sundays. It was a cool evening, there was a fresh sea wind that brought a light mist with it, and the sky was fast growing cloudy. Somehow the children looked different; it seemed to their mother as if they had grown older and taller since they went away in the morning, and as if they belonged to the town now as much as to the country. The greatness of their day’s experience had left her far behind; the day had been silent and lonely without them, and she had had their supper ready, and been watching anxiously, ever since five o’clock. As for the children themselves they had little to say at first—they had eaten their luncheon early on the way to Topham. Susan Ellen was childishly cross, but Katy was pathetic and wan. They could hardly wait to show the picture, and their mother was as much pleased as everybody had expected.

277“There, what did make you wear your shawls?” she exclaimed a moment afterward, reproachfully. “You ain’t been an’ wore ’em all day long? I wanted folks to see how pretty your new dresses was, if I did make ’em. Well, well! I wish more ’n ever now I’d gone an’ seen to ye!”

“An’ here’s the pepper-box!” said Katy, in a pleased, unconscious tone.

“That really is what I call beautiful,” said Mrs. Hilton, after a long and doubtful look. “Our other one was only tin. I never did look so high as a chiny one with flowers, but I can get us another any time for every day. That’s a proper hat, as good as you could have got, John. Where’s your new hoe?” she asked as he came toward her from the barn, smiling with satisfaction.

“I declare to Moses if I didn’t forget all about it,” meekly acknowledged the leader of the great excursion. “That an’ my yellow turnip seed, too; they went clean out o’ my head, there was so many other things to think of. But ’tain’t no sort o’ matter; I can get a hoe just as well to Ira Speed’s.”

His wife could not help laughing. “You an’ the little girls have had a great time. They was full o’ wonder to me about everything, 278and I expect they’ll talk about it for a week. I guess we was right about havin’ ’em see somethin’ more o’ the world.”

“Yes,” answered John Hilton, with humility, “yes, we did have a beautiful day. I didn’t expect so much. They looked as nice as anybody, and appeared so modest an’ pretty. The little girls will remember it perhaps by an’ by. I guess they won’t never forget this day they had ’long o’ father.”

It was evening again, the frogs were piping in the lower meadows, and in the woods, higher up the great hill, a little owl began to hoot. The sea air, salt and heavy, was blowing in over the country at the end of the hot bright day. A lamp was lighted in the house, the happy children were talking together, and supper was waiting. The father and mother lingered for a moment outside and looked down over the shadowy fields; then they went in, without speaking. The great day was over, and they shut the door.

AUNT CYNTHY DALLETT. — I. — II. — III.

“No,” said Mrs. Hand, speaking wistfully,—“no, we never were in the habit of keeping Christmas at our house. Mother died when we were all young; she would have been the one to keep up with all new ideas, but father and grandmother were old-fashioned folks, and—well, you know how ’twas then, Miss Pendexter: nobody took much notice of the day except to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

“They didn’t do much to make it merry, certain,” answered Miss Pendexter. “Sometimes nowadays I hear folks complainin’ o’ bein’ overtaxed with all the Christmas work they have to do.”

“Well, others think that it makes a lovely chance for all that really enjoys givin’; you get an opportunity to speak your kind feelin’ right out,” answered Mrs. Hand, with a bright smile. “But there! I shall always keep New Year’s Day, too; it won’t do no 280hurt to have an extra day kept an’ made pleasant. And there’s many of the real old folks have got pretty things to remember about New Year’s Day.”

“Aunt Cynthy Dallett’s just one of ’em,” said Miss Pendexter. “She’s always very reproachful if I don’t get up to see her. Last year I missed it, on account of a light fall o’ snow that seemed to make the walkin’ too bad, an’ she sent a neighbor’s boy ’way down from the mount’in to see if I was sick. Her lameness confines her to the house altogether now, an’ I have her on my mind a good deal. How anybody does get thinkin’ of those that lives alone, as they get older! I waked up only last night with a start, thinkin’ if Aunt Cynthy’s house should get afire or anything, what she would do, ’way up there all alone. I was half dreamin’, I s’pose, but I couldn’t seem to settle down until I got up an’ went upstairs to the north garret window to see if I could see any light; but the mountains was all dark an’ safe, same ’s usual. I remember noticin’ last time I was there that her chimney needed pointin’, and I spoke to her about it,—the bricks looked poor in some places.”

“Can you see the house from your north 281gable window?” asked Mrs. Hand, a little absently.

“Yes’m; it’s a great comfort that I can,” answered her companion. “I have often wished we were near enough to have her make me some sort o’ signal in case she needed help. I used to plead with her to come down and spend the winters with me, but she told me one day I might as well try to fetch down one o’ the old hemlocks, an’ I believe ’twas true.”

“Your aunt Dallett is a very self-contained person,” observed Mrs. Hand.

“Oh, very!” exclaimed the elderly niece, with a pleased look. “Aunt Cynthy laughs, an’ says she expects the time will come when age ’ll compel her to have me move up an’ take care of her; and last time I was there she looked up real funny, an’ says, ‘I do’ know, Abby; I’m most afeard sometimes that I feel myself beginnin’ to look for’ard to it!’ ’Twas a good deal, comin’ from Aunt Cynthy, an’ I so esteemed it.”

“She ought to have you there now,” said Mrs. Hand. “You’d both make a savin’ by doin’ it; but I don’t expect she needs to save as much as some. There! I know just how you both feel. I like to have my own 282home an’ do everything just my way too.” And the friends laughed, and looked at each other affectionately.

“There was old Mr. Nathan Dunn,—left no debts an’ no money when he died,” said Mrs. Hand. “’Twas over to his niece’s last summer. He had a little money in his wallet, an’ when the bill for funeral expenses come in there was just exactly enough; some item or other made it come to so many dollars an’ eighty-four cents, and, lo an’ behold! there was eighty-four cents in a little separate pocket beside the neat fold o’ bills, as if the old gentleman had known beforehand. His niece couldn’t help laughin’, to save her; she said the old gentleman died as methodical as he lived. She didn’t expect he had any money, an’ was prepared to pay for everything herself; she’s very well off.”

“’Twas funny, certain,” said Miss Pendexter. “I expect he felt comfortable, knowin’ he had that money by him. ’Tis a comfort, when all ’s said and done, ‘specially to folks that ’s gettin’ old.”

A sad look shadowed her face for an instant, and then she smiled and rose to take leave, looking expectantly at her hostess to see if there were anything more to be said.

283“I hope to come out square myself,” she said, by way of farewell pleasantry; “but there are times when I feel doubtful.”

Mrs. Hand was evidently considering something, and waited a moment or two before she spoke. “Suppose we both walk up to see your aunt Dallett, New Year’s Day, if it ain’t too windy and the snow keeps off?” she proposed. “I couldn’t rise the hill if ’twas a windy day. We could take a hearty breakfast an’ start in good season; I’d rather walk than ride, the road’s so rough this time o’ year.”

“Oh, what a person you are to think o’ things! I did so dread goin’ ’way up there all alone,” said Abby Pendexter. “I’m no hand to go off alone, an’ I had it before me, so I really got to dread it. I do so enjoy it after I get there, seein’ Aunt Cynthy, an’ she’s always so much better than I expect to find her.”

“Well, we’ll start early,” said Mrs. Hand cheerfully; and so they parted. As Miss Pendexter went down the foot-path to the gate, she sent grateful thoughts back to the little sitting-room she had just left.

“How doors are opened!” she exclaimed to herself. “Here I’ve been so poor an’ 284distressed at beginnin’ the year with nothin’, as it were, that I couldn’t think o’ even goin’ to make poor old Aunt Cynthy a friendly call. I’ll manage to make some kind of a little pleasure too, an’ somethin’ for dear Mis’ Hand. ‘Use what you’ve got,’ mother always used to say when every sort of an emergency come up, an’ I may only have wishes to give, but I’ll make ’em good ones!”

The first day of the year was clear and bright, as if it were a New Year’s pattern of what winter can be at its very best. The two friends were prepared for changes of weather, and met each other well wrapped in their winter cloaks and shawls, with sufficient brown barége veils tied securely over their bonnets. They ignored for some time the plain truth that each carried something under her arm; the shawls were rounded out suspiciously, especially Miss Pendexter’s, but each respected the other’s air of secrecy. The narrow road was frozen in deep ruts, but a smooth-trodden little foot-path that ran along its edge was very inviting to the wayfarers. Mrs. Hand walked first and 285Miss Pendexter followed, and they were talking busily nearly all the way, so that they had to stop for breath now and then at the tops of the little hills. It was not a hard walk; there were a good many almost level stretches through the woods, in spite of the fact that they should be a very great deal higher when they reached Mrs. Dallett’s door.

“I do declare, what a nice day ’tis, an’ such pretty footin’!” said Mrs. Hand, with satisfaction. “Seems to me as if my feet went o’ themselves; gener’lly I have to toil so when I walk that I can’t enjoy nothin’ when I get to a place.”

“It’s partly this beautiful bracin’ air,” said Abby Pendexter. “Sometimes such nice air comes just before a fall of snow. Don’t it seem to make anybody feel young again and to take all your troubles away?”

Mrs. Hand was a comfortable, well-to-do soul, who seldom worried about anything, but something in her companion’s tone touched her heart, and she glanced sidewise and saw a pained look in Abby Pendexter’s thin face. It was a moment for confidence.

“Why, you speak as if something distressed your mind, Abby,” said the elder woman kindly.

286“I ain’t one that has myself on my mind as a usual thing, but it does seem now as if I was goin’ to have it very hard,” said Abby. “Well, I’ve been anxious before.”

“Is it anything wrong about your property?” Mrs. Hand ventured to ask.

“Only that I ain’t got any,” answered Abby, trying to speak gayly. “’Twas all I could do to pay my last quarter’s rent, twelve dollars. I sold my hens, all but this one that had run away at the time, an’ now I’m carryin’ her up to Aunt Cynthy, roasted just as nice as I know how.”

“I thought you was carrying somethin’,” said Mrs. Hand, in her usual tone. “For me, I’ve got a couple o’ my mince pies. I thought the old lady might like ’em; one we can eat for our dinner, and one she shall have to keep. But weren’t you unwise to sacrifice your poultry, Abby? You always need eggs, and hens don’t cost much to keep.”

“Why, yes, I shall miss ’em,” said Abby; “but, you see, I had to do every way to get my rent-money. Now the shop’s shut down I haven’t got any way of earnin’ anything, and I spent what little I’ve saved through the summer.”

“Your aunt Cynthy ought to know it 287an’ ought to help you,” said Mrs. Hand. “You’re a real foolish person, I must say. I expect you do for her when she ought to do for you.”

“She’s old, an’ she’s all the near relation I’ve got,” said the little woman. “I’ve always felt the time would come when she’d need me, but it’s been her great pleasure to live alone an’ feel free. I shall get along somehow, but I shall have it hard. Somebody may want help for a spell this winter, but I’m afraid I shall have to give up my house. ’Tain’t as if I owned it. I don’t know just what to do, but there’ll be a way.”

Mrs. Hand shifted her two pies to the other arm, and stepped across to the other side of the road where the ground looked a little smoother.

“No, I wouldn’t worry if I was you, Abby,” she said. “There, I suppose if ’twas me I should worry a good deal more! I expect I should lay awake nights.” But Abby answered nothing, and they came to a steep place in the road and found another subject for conversation at the top.

“Your aunt don’t know we’re coming?” asked the chief guest of the occasion.

“Oh, no, I never send her word,” said 288Miss Pendexter. “She’d be so desirous to get everything ready, just as she used to.”

“She never seemed to make any trouble o’ havin’ company; she always appeared so easy and pleasant, and let you set with her while she made her preparations,” said Mrs. Hand, with great approval. “Some has such a dreadful way of making you feel inopportune, and you can’t always send word you’re comin’. I did have a visit once that’s always been a lesson to me; ’twas years ago; I don’t know’s I ever told you?”

“I don’t believe you ever did,” responded the listener to this somewhat indefinite prelude.

“Well, ’twas one hot summer afternoon. I set forth an’ took a great long walk ’way over to Mis’ Eben Fulham’s, on the crossroad between the cranberry ma’sh and Staples’s Corner. The doctor was drivin’ that way, an’ he give me a lift that shortened it some at the last; but I never should have started, if I’d known ’twas so far. I had been promisin’ all summer to go, and every time I saw Mis’ Fulham, Sundays, she’d say somethin’ about it. We wa’n’t very well acquainted, but always friendly. She moved here from Bedford Hill.”

289“Oh, yes; I used to know her,” said Abby, with interest.

“Well, now, she did give me a beautiful welcome when I got there,” continued Mrs. Hand. “’Twas about four o’clock in the afternoon, an’ I told her I’d come to accept her invitation if ’twas convenient, an’ the doctor had been called several miles beyond and expected to be detained, but he was goin’ to pick me up as he returned about seven; ’twas very kind of him. She took me right in, and she did appear so pleased, an’ I must go right into the best room where ’twas cool, and then she said she’d have tea early, and I should have to excuse her a short time. I asked her not to make any difference, and if I couldn’t assist her; but she said no, I must just take her as I found her; and she give me a large fan, and off she went.

“There. I was glad to be still and rest where ’twas cool, an’ I set there in the rockin’-chair an’ enjoyed it for a while, an’ I heard her clacking at the oven door out beyond, an’ gittin’ out some dishes. She was a brisk-actin’ little woman, an’ I thought I’d caution her when she come back not to make up a great fire, only for a cup o’ tea, perhaps. I started to go right out in the kitchen, an’ 290then somethin’ told me I’d better not, we never ’d been so free together as that; I didn’t know how she’d take it, an’ there I set an’ set. ’Twas sort of a greenish light in the best room, an’ it begun to feel a little damp to me,—the s’rubs outside grew close up to the windows. Oh, it did seem dreadful long! I could hear her busy with the dishes an’ beatin’ eggs an’ stirrin’, an’ I knew she was puttin’ herself out to get up a great supper, and I kind o’ fidgeted about a little an’ even stepped to the door, but I thought she’d expect me to remain where I was. I saw everything in that room forty times over, an’ I did divert myself killin’ off a brood o’ moths that was in a worsted-work mat on the table. It all fell to pieces. I never saw such a sight o’ moths to once. But occupation failed after that, an’ I begun to feel sort o’ tired an’ numb. There was one o’ them late crickets got into the room an’ begun to chirp, an’ it sounded kind o’ fallish. I couldn’t help sayin’ to myself that Mis’ Fulham had forgot all about my bein’ there. I thought of all the beauties of hospitality that ever I see!”—

“Didn’t she ever come back at all, not whilst things was in the oven, nor nothin’?” inquired Miss Pendexter, with awe.

291“I never see her again till she come beamin’ to the parlor door an’ invited me to walk out to tea,” said Mrs. Hand. “’Twas ’most a quarter past six by the clock; I thought ’twas seven. I’d thought o’ everything, an’ I’d counted, an’ I’d trotted my foot, an’ I’d looked more ’n twenty times to see if there was any more moth-millers.”

“I s’pose you did have a very nice tea?” suggested Abby, with interest.

“Oh, a beautiful tea! She couldn’t have done more if I’d been the Queen,” said Mrs. Hand. “I don’t know how she could ever have done it all in the time, I’m sure. The table was loaded down; there was cup-custards and custard pie, an’ cream pie, an’ two kinds o’ hot biscuits, an’ black tea as well as green, an’ elegant cake,—one kind she’d just made new, and called it quick cake; I’ve often made it since—an’ she’d opened her best preserves, two kinds. We set down together, an’ I’m sure I appreciated what she’d done; but ’twa’n’t no time for real conversation whilst we was to the table, and before we got quite through the doctor come hurryin’ along, an’ I had to leave. He asked us if we’d had a good talk, as we come out, an’ I couldn’t help laughing to myself; but she 292said quite hearty that she’d had a nice visit from me. She appeared well satisfied, Mis’ Fulham did; but for me, I was disappointed; an’ early that fall she died.”

Abby Pendexter was laughing like a girl; the speaker’s tone had grown more and more complaining. “I do call that a funny experience,” she said. “‘Better a dinner o’ herbs.’ I guess that text must ha’ risen to your mind in connection. You must tell that to Aunt Cynthy, if conversation seems to fail.” And she laughed again, but Mrs. Hand still looked solemn and reproachful.

“Here we are; there’s Aunt Cynthy’s lane right ahead, there by the great yellow birch,” said Abby. “I must say, you’ve made the way seem very short, Mis’ Hand.”

Old Aunt Cynthia Dallett sat in her high-backed rocking-chair by the little north window, which was her favorite dwelling-place.

“New Year’s Day again,” she said, aloud,—“New Year’s Day again!” And she folded her old bent hands, and looked out at the great woodland view and the hills 293without really seeing them, she was lost in so deep a reverie. “I’m gittin’ to be very old,” she added, after a little while.

It was perfectly still in the small gray house. Outside in the apple-trees there were some blue-jays flitting about and calling noisily, like schoolboys fighting at their games. The kitchen was full of pale winter sunshine. It was more like late October than the first of January, and the plain little room seemed to smile back into the sun’s face. The outer door was standing open into the green dooryard, and a fat small dog lay asleep on the step. A capacious cupboard stood behind Mrs. Dallett’s chair and kept the wind away from her corner. Its doors and drawers were painted a clean lead-color, and there were places round the knobs and buttons where the touch of hands had worn deep into the wood. Every braided rug was straight on the floor. The square clock on its shelf between the front windows looked as if it had just had its face washed and been wound up for a whole year to come. If Mrs. Dallett turned her head she could look into the bedroom, where her plump feather bed was covered with its dark blue homespun winter quilt. It was all 294very peaceful and comfortable, but it was very lonely. By her side, on a light-stand, lay the religious newspaper of her denomination, and a pair of spectacles whose jointed silver bows looked like a funny two-legged beetle cast helplessly upon its back.

“New Year’s Day again,” said old Cynthia Dallett. Time had left nobody in her house to wish her a Happy New Year,—she was the last one left in the old nest. “I’m gittin’ to be very old,” she said for the second time; it seemed to be all there was to say.

She was keeping a careful eye on her friendly clock, but it was hardly past the middle of the morning, and there was no excuse for moving; it was the long hour between the end of her slow morning work and the appointed time for beginning to get dinner. She was so stiff and lame that this hour’s rest was usually most welcome, but to-day she sat as if it were Sunday, and did not take up her old shallow splint basket of braiding-rags from the side of her footstool.

“I do hope Abby Pendexter ’ll make out to git up to see me this afternoon as usual,” she continued. “I know ’tain’t so easy for her to get up the hill as it used to be, but I 295do seem to want to see some o’ my own folks. I wish ’t I’d thought to send her word I expected her when Jabez Hooper went back after he came up here with the flour. I’d like to have had her come prepared to stop two or three days.”

A little chickadee perched on the window-sill outside and bobbed his head sideways to look in, and then pecked impatiently at the glass. The old woman laughed at him with childish pleasure and felt companioned; it was pleasant at that moment to see the life in even a bird’s bright eye.

“Sign of a stranger,” she said, as he whisked his wings and flew away in a hurry. “I must throw out some crumbs for ’em; it’s getting to be hard pickin’ for the stayin’-birds.” She looked past the trees of her little orchard now with seeing eyes, and followed the long forest slopes that led downward to the lowland country. She could see the two white steeples of Fairfield Village, and the map of fields and pastures along the valley beyond, and the great hills across the valley to the westward. The scattered houses looked like toys that had been scattered by children. She knew their lights by night, and watched the smoke of 296their chimneys by day. Far to the northward were higher mountains, and these were already white with snow. Winter was already in sight, but to-day the wind was in the south, and the snow seemed only part of a great picture.

“I do hope the cold ’ll keep off a while longer,” thought Mrs. Dallett. “I don’t know how I’m going to get along after the deep snow comes.”

The little dog suddenly waked, as if he had had a bad dream, and after giving a few anxious whines he began to bark outrageously. His mistress tried, as usual, to appeal to his better feelings.

“’Tain’t nobody, Tiger,” she said. “Can’t you have some patience? Maybe it’s some foolish boys that’s rangin’ about with their guns.” But Tiger kept on, and even took the trouble to waddle in on his short legs, barking all the way. He looked warningly at her, and then turned and ran out again. Then she saw him go hurrying down to the bars, as if it were an occasion of unusual interest.

“I guess somebody is comin’; he don’t act as if ’twere a vagrant kind o’ noise; must really be somebody in our lane.” And 297Mrs. Dallett smoothed her apron and gave an anxious housekeeper’s glance round the kitchen. None of her state visitors, the minister or the deacons, ever came in the morning. Country people are usually too busy to go visiting in the forenoons.

Presently two figures appeared where the road came out of the woods,—the two women already known to the story, but very surprising to Mrs. Dallett; the short, thin one was easily recognized as Abby Pendexter, and the taller, stout one was soon discovered to be Mrs. Hand. Their old friend’s heart was in a glow. As the guests approached they could see her pale face with its thin white hair framed under the close black silk handkerchief.

“There she is at her window smilin’ away!” exclaimed Mrs. Hand; but by the time they reached the doorstep she stood waiting to meet them.

“Why, you two dear creatur’s!” she said, with a beaming smile. “I don’t know when I’ve ever been so glad to see folks comin’. I had a kind of left-all-alone feelin’ this mornin’, an’ I didn’t even make bold to be certain o’ you, Abby, though it looked so pleasant. Come right in an’ set down. 298You’re all out o’ breath, ain’t you, Mis’ Hand?”

Mrs. Dallett led the way with eager hospitality. She was the tiniest little bent old creature, her handkerchiefed head was quick and alert, and her eyes were bright with excitement and feeling, but the rest of her was much the worse for age; she could hardly move, poor soul, as if she had only a make-believe framework of a body under a shoulder-shawl and thick petticoats. She got back to her chair again, and the guests took off their bonnets in the bedroom, and returned discreet and sedate in their black woolen dresses. The lonely kitchen was blest with society at last, to its mistress’s heart’s content. They talked as fast as possible about the weather, and how warm it had been walking up the mountain, and how cold it had been a year ago, that day when Abby Pendexter had been kept at home by a snowstorm and missed her visit. “And I ain’t seen you now, aunt, since the twenty-eighth of September, but I’ve thought of you a great deal, and looked forward to comin’ more ’n usual,” she ended, with an affectionate glance at the pleased old face by the window.

299“I’ve been wantin’ to see you, dear, and wonderin’ how you was gettin’ on,” said Aunt Cynthy kindly. “And I take it as a great attention to have you come to-day, Mis’ Hand,” she added, turning again towards the more distinguished guest. “We have to put one thing against another. I should hate dreadfully to live anywhere except on a high hill farm, ‘cordin’ as I was born an’ raised. But there ain’t the chance to neighbor that townfolks has, an’ I do seem to have more lonely hours than I used to when I was younger. I don’t know but I shall soon be gittin’ too old to live alone.” And she turned to her niece with an expectant, lovely look, and Abby smiled back.

“I often wish I could run in an’ see you every day, aunt,” she answered. “I have been sayin’ so to Mrs. Hand.”

“There, how anybody does relish company when they don’t have but a little of it!” exclaimed Aunt Cynthia. “I am all alone to-day; there is going to be a shootin’-match somewhere the other side o’ the mountain, an’ Johnny Foss, that does my chores, begged off to go when he brought the milk unusual early this mornin’. Gener’lly he’s about here all the fore part of the day; but 300he don’t go off with the boys very often, and I like to have him have a little sport; ’twas New Year’s Day, anyway; he’s a good, stiddy boy for my wants.”

“Why, I wish you Happy New Year, aunt!” said Abby, springing up with unusual spirit. “Why, that’s just what we come to say, and we like to have forgot all about it!” She kissed her aunt, and stood a minute holding her hand with a soft, affectionate touch. Mrs. Hand rose and kissed Mrs. Dallett too, and it was a moment of ceremony and deep feeling.

“I always like to keep the day,” said the old hostess, as they seated themselves and drew their splint-bottomed chairs a little nearer together than before. “You see, I was brought up to it, and father made a good deal of it; he said he liked to make it pleasant and give the year a fair start. I can see him now, how he used to be standing there by the fireplace when we came out o’ the two bedrooms early in the morning, an’ he always made out, poor ’s he was, to give us some little present, and he’d heap ’em up on the corner o’ the mantelpiece, an’ we’d stand front of him in a row, and mother be bustling about gettin’ breakfast. 301One year he give me a beautiful copy o’ the ‘Life o’ General Lafayette,’ in a green cover,—I’ve got it now, but we child’n ’bout read it to pieces,—an’ one year a nice piece o’ blue ribbon, an’ Abby—that was your mother, Abby—had a pink one. Father was real kind to his child’n. I thought o’ them early days when I first waked up this mornin’, and I couldn’t help lookin’ up then to the corner o’ the shelf just as I used to look.”

“There’s nothin’ so beautiful as to have a bright childhood to look back to,” said Mrs. Hand. “Sometimes I think child’n has too hard a time now,—all the responsibility is put on to ’em, since they take the lead o’ what to do an’ what they want, and get to be so toppin’ an’ knowin’. ’Twas happier in the old days, when the fathers an’ mothers done the rulin’.”

“They say things have changed,” said Aunt Cynthy; “but staying right here, I don’t know much of any world but my own world.”

Abby Pendexter did not join in this conversation, but sat in her straight-backed chair with folded hands and the air of a good child. The little old dog had followed 302her in, and now lay sound asleep again at her feet. The front breadth of her black dress looked rusty and old in the sunshine that slanted across it, and the aunt’s sharp eyes saw this and saw the careful darns. Abby was as neat as wax, but she looked as if the frost had struck her. “I declare, she’s gittin’ along in years,” thought Aunt Cynthia compassionately. “She begins to look sort o’ set and dried up, Abby does. She oughtn’t to live all alone; she’s one that needs company.”

At this moment Abby looked up with new interest. “Now, aunt,” she said, in her pleasant voice, “I don’t want you to forget to tell me if there ain’t some sewin’ or mendin’ I can do whilst I’m here. I know your hands trouble you some, an’ I may ’s well tell you we’re bent on stayin’ all day an’ makin’ a good visit, Mis’ Hand an’ me.”

“Thank ye kindly,” said the old woman; “I do want a little sewin’ done before long, but ’tain’t no use to spile a good holiday.” Her face took a resolved expression. “I’m goin’ to make other arrangements,” she said. “No, you needn’t come up here to pass New Year’s Day an’ be put right down to sewin’. I make out to do what mendin’ 303I need, an’ to sew on my hooks an’ eyes. I get Johnny Ross to thread me up a good lot o’ needles every little while, an’ that helps me a good deal. Abby, why can’t you step into the best room an’ bring out the rockin’-chair? I seem to want Mis’ Hand to have it.”

“I opened the window to let the sun in awhile,” said the niece, as she returned. “It felt cool in there an’ shut up.”

“I thought of doin’ it not long before you come,” said Mrs. Dallett, looking gratified. Once the taking of such a liberty would have been very provoking to her. “Why, it does seem good to have somebody think o’ things an’ take right hold like that!”

“I’m sure you would, if you were down at my house,” said Abby, blushing. “Aunt Cynthy, I don’t suppose you could feel as if ’twould be best to come down an’ pass the winter with me,—just durin’ the cold weather, I mean. You’d see more folks to amuse you, an’—I do think of you so anxious these long winter nights.”

There was a terrible silence in the room, and Miss Pendexter felt her heart begin to beat very fast. She did not dare to look at her aunt at first.

304Presently the silence was broken. Aunt Cynthia had been gazing out of the window, and she turned towards them a little paler and older than before, and smiling sadly.

“Well, dear, I’ll do just as you say,” she answered. “I’m beat by age at last, but I’ve had my own way for eighty-five years, come the month o’ March, an’ last winter I did use to lay awake an’ worry in the long storms. I’m kind o’ humble now about livin’ alone to what I was once.” At this moment a new light shone in her face. “I don’t expect you’d be willin’ to come up here an’ stay till spring,—not if I had Foss’s folks stop for you to ride to meetin’ every pleasant Sunday, an’ take you down to the Corners plenty o’ other times besides?” she said beseechingly. “No, Abby, I’m too old to move now; I should be homesick down to the village. If you’ll come an’ stay with me, all I have shall be yours. Mis’ Hand hears me say it.”

“Oh, don’t you think o’ that; you’re all I’ve got near to me in the world, an’ I’ll come an’ welcome,” said Abby, though the thought of her own little home gave a hard tug at her heart. “Yes, Aunt Cynthy, I’ll 305come, an’ we’ll be real comfortable together. I’ve been lonesome sometimes”—

“’Twill be best for both,” said Mrs. Hand judicially. And so the great question was settled, and suddenly, without too much excitement, it became a thing of the past.

“We must be thinkin’ o’ dinner,” said Aunt Cynthia gayly. “I wish I was better prepared; but there’s nice eggs an’ pork an’ potatoes, an’ you girls can take hold an’ help.” At this moment the roast chicken and the best mince pies were offered and kindly accepted, and before another hour had gone they were sitting at their New Year feast, which Mrs. Dallett decided to be quite proper for the Queen.

Before the guests departed, when the sun was getting low, Aunt Cynthia called her niece to her side and took hold of her hand.

“Don’t you make it too long now, Abby,” said she. “I shall be wantin’ ye every day till you come; but you mustn’t forgit what a set old thing I be.”

Abby had the kindest of hearts, and was always longing for somebody to love and care for; her aunt’s very age and helplessness seemed to beg for pity.

306“This is Saturday; you may expect me the early part of the week; and thank you, too, aunt,” said Abby.

Mrs. Hand stood by with deep sympathy. “It’s the proper thing,” she announced calmly. “You’d both of you be a sight happier; and truth is, Abby’s wild an’ reckless, an’ needs somebody to stand right over her, Mis’ Dallett. I guess she’ll try an’ behave, but there—there’s no knowin’!” And they all laughed. Then the New Year guests said farewell and started off down the mountain road. They looked back more than once to see Aunt Cynthia’s face at the window as she watched them out of sight. Miss Abby Pendexter was full of excitement; she looked as happy as a child.

“I feel as if we’d gained the battle of Waterloo,” said Mrs. Hand. “I’ve really had a most beautiful time. You an’ your aunt mustn’t forgit to invite me up some time again to spend another day.”