Chapter III: Part 3

Her quarry answered patiently, yet with a certain dogged resistance of her,--

"I dunno's there's anything to tell."

"How'd it go off?"

"'Bout as usual."

"Did you speak?"

"No."

"Lead in prayer?"

"No."

"Wa'n't you _asked_?"

"No."

"Well, my soul! Was Roxy Cole there?"

"Yes."

"Did you fetch her home?"

"No, I didn't!" Some mild exasperation animated his tone at last. The Widder detected it, and occupied herself with her tooth.

"My soul an' body! I wonder if it's goin' to grumble all night long!" she exclaimed, bending lower over the blaze. "I've tried everything but a roasted raisin, an' I b'lieve I shall come to that."

Heman rose, and opened the clock on the mantel; he drew forth the key from under the pendulum, and slowly wound up the time-worn machinery. In another instant, he would be on his way to bed; the Widder knew she must waste no time in hurt silence, if she meant to find out anything. She began hastily,--

"Did they say anything about the church fair?"

"They ain't goin' to have it."

"Not have it! Well, how _be_ they goin' to git the shinglin' paid for?"

"They've got up the idee of an Old Folks' Concert."

"Singin'?"

"Singin' an' playin'."

"Who's goin' to play?"

"Brad Freeman an' Jont Marshall agreed to play fust an' second fiddle." Heman paused a moment, and straightened himself with an air of conscious pride; then he added,--

"They've asked me to play the bass-viol."

The Widder had no special objections to this arrangement, but it did strike her as an innovation; and when she had no other reason for disapproval, she still believed in it on general principles. So altogether effective a weapon should never rust from infrequent use!

"Well!" she announced. "I never heard of such carryin's-on,--never!"

Heman was lighting a small kerosene lamp. The little circle of light seemed even brilliant in the dusky room; it affected him with a relief so sudden and manifest as to rouse also a temporary irritation at having endured the previous gloom even for a moment.

"'Ain't you got no oil in the house?" he exclaimed, testily. "I wish you'd light up, evenin's, an' not set here by one taller candle!"

He had ventured on this remonstrance before, the only one he permitted himself against his housekeeper's ways, and at the instant of making it, he realized its futility.

"The gre't lamp's all full," said the Widder, warming her apron and pressing it to her poulticed face. "You can light it, if you've got the heart to. That was poor Mary's lamp, an' hard as I've tried, I never could bring myself to put a match to that wick. How many evenin's I've seen her set by it, rockin' back'ards an' for'ards,--an' her needle goin' in an' out! She was a worker, if ever there was one, poor creatur'! At it all the time, jes' like a silk-worm."

Heman was perfectly familiar with this explanation; from long repetition, he had it quite by heart. Possibly that was why he did not wait for its conclusion, but tramped stolidly away to his bedroom, where he had begun to kick off his shoes by the time his sister-in-law reached a period.

The Widder had a fresh poultice waiting by the fire. She applied it to her cheek, did up her face in an old flannel petticoat, and then, having covered the fire, toiled up to bed. It was a wearisome journey, for she carried a heavy soapstone which showed a tendency to conflict with the candle, and she found it necessary to hold together most of her garments; these she had "loosened a mite by the fire," according to custom on cold nights, after Heman had left her the field.

Next day, Heman went away into the woods chopping, and carried his dinner of doughnuts and cheese, with a chunk of bean-porridge frozen into a ball, to be thawed out by his noontime fire. He returned much earlier than usual, and the Widder was at the window awaiting him. The swelling in her cheek had somewhat subsided; and the bandage, no longer distended by a poultice beneath, seemed, in comparison, a species of holiday device. She was very impatient. She watched Heman, as he went first to the barn; and even opened the back door a crack to listen for the rattling of chains, the signal of feeding or watering.

"What's he want to do that now for?" she muttered, closing the door again, as the cold struck her cheek. "He'll have to feed 'em ag'in, come night!"

But at last he came, and, according to his silent wont, crossed the kitchen to the sink, to wash his hands. He was an unobservant man, and it did not occur to him that the Widder had on her Tycoon rep, the gown she kept "for nice." Indeed, he was so unused to looking at her that he might well have forgotten her outward appearance. He was only sure of her size; he knew she cut off a good deal of light. One sign, however, he did recognize; she was very cheerful, with a hollow good-nature which had its meaning.

"I got your shavin'-water all ready," she began. "Don't you burn ye when ye turn it out."

It had once been said of the Widder Poll that if she could hold her tongue, the devil himself couldn't get ahead of her. But fortune had not gifted her with such endurance, and she always spoke too often and too soon.

"Brad Freeman's been up here," she continued, eying Heman, as she drew out the supper-table and put up the leaves. "I dunno's I ever knew anybody so took up as he is with that concert, an' goin' to the vestry to sing to-night, an' all. He said he'd call here an' ride 'long o' you, an' I told him there'd be plenty o' room, for you'd take the pung."

If Heman felt any surprise at her knowledge of his purpose, he did not betray it. He poured out his shaving-water, and looked about him for an old newspaper.

"I ain't goin' in the pung," he answered, without glancing at her. "The shoe's most off'n one o' the runners now."

The Widder Poll set a pie on the table with an emphasis unconsciously embodying her sense that now, indeed, had come the time for remedies.

"I dunno what you can take," she remarked, with that same foreboding liveliness. "Three on a seat, an' your bass-viol, too!"

Heman was lathering his cheeks before the mirror, where a sinuous Venus and a too-corpulent Cupid disported themselves in a green landscape above the glass. "There ain't goin' to be three," he said, patiently. "T'others are goin' by themselves."

The Widder took up her stand at a well-chosen angle, and looked at him in silence. He paid no attention to her, and it was she who, of necessity, broke into speech.

"_Well!_ I've got no more to say. Do you mean to tell me you'd go off playin' on fiddles an' bass-viols, an' leave me, your own wife's sister, settin' here the whole evenin' long, all swelled up with the toothache?"

Heman often felt that he had reached a state of mind where nothing could surprise him, but this point of view was really unexpected. He decided, however, with some scorn, that the present misunderstanding might arise from a confusion of terms in the feminine mind.

"This ain't the concert," he replied, much as if she had proposed going to the polls. "It's the rehearsal. That means where you play the tunes over. The concert ain't comin' off for a month."

And now the Widder Poll spoke with the air of one injured almost beyond reparation.

"I'd like to know what difference that makes! If a man's goin' where he can't take his womenfolks, I say he'd better stay to home! an' if there's things goin' on there't you don't want me to git hold of, I tell you, Heman Blaisdell, you'd better by half stop shavin' you now, an' take yourself off to bed at seven o'clock! Traipsin' round playin' the fiddle at your age! Ain't I fond o' music?"

"No, you ain't!" burst forth Heman, roused to brief revolt where his beloved instrument was concerned. "You don't know Old Hunderd from Yankee Doodle!"

The Widder walked round the table and confronted him as he was turning away from the glass, shaving-mug in hand.

"You answer me one question! I know who's goin' to be there, an' set in the chorus an' sing alto. Brad Freeman told me, as innercent as a lamb. Heman Blaisdell, you answer me? Be you goin' to bring anybody here to this house, an' set her in poor Mary's place? If you be, I ought to be the fust one to know it."

Heman looked at the shaving-mug for a moment, as if he contemplated dashing it to the floor. Then he tightened his grasp on it, like one putting the devil behind him.

"No, I ain't," he said, doggedly, adding under his breath, "not unless I'm drove to 't."

"I dunno who could ha' done more," said the Widder, so patently with the air of continuing for an indefinite period that Heman reached up for his hat. "Where you goin'? Mercy sakes alive! don't you mean to eat no supper, now I've got it all ready?"

But Heman pushed his way past her and escaped, muttering something about "feedin' the critters." Perhaps the "critters" under his care were fed oftener than those on farms where the ingle-nook was at least as cosey as the barn.

These slight skirmishes always left Heman with an uneasy sense that somehow he also must be to blame, though he never got beyond wondering what could have been done to avert the squall. When he went back into the kitchen, however,--the "critters" fed, and his own nerves soothed by pitchforking the haymow with the vigor of one who assaults a citadel,--he was much relieved at finding the atmosphere as clear as usual; and as the early twilight drew on, he became almost happy at thought of; the vivid pleasure before him. Never, since his wife died, had he played his bass-viol in public; but he had long been in the habit of "slying off" upstairs to it, as to a tryst with lover or friend whom the world denied. The Widder Poll, though she heard it wailing and droning thence, never seriously objected to it; the practice was undoubtedly "shaller," but it kept him in the house.

They ate supper in silence; and then, while she washed the dishes, Heman changed his clothes, and went to the barn to harness. He stood for a moment, irresolute, when the horse was ready, and then backed him into the old blue pung. A queer little smile lurked at the corners of his mouth.

"I guess the shoe'll go once more," he muttered. "No, I ain't goin' to marry ag'in! I said I ain't, an' I ain't. But I guess I can give a neighbor a lift, if I want to!"

Brad Freeman was waiting near the tack door when Heman led the horse out of the barn. He was lank and lean, and his thick red hair strayed low over the forehead. His army overcoat was rent here and there beyond the salvation which lay in his wife's patient mending, and his old fur cap showed the skin in moth-eaten patches; yet Heman thought, with a wondering protest, how young he looked, how free from care.

"Hullo, Heman!" called Brad.

"How are ye?" responded Heman, with a cordiality Brad never failed to elicit from his brother man.

Heman left the horse standing, and opened the back door.

He stopped short. An awful vision confronted him,--the Widder Poll, clad not only in the Tycoon rep, but her best palm-leaf shawl, her fitch tippet, and pumpkin hood; her face was still bandaged, and her head-gear had been enwound by a green _barège_ veil. She stepped forward with an alertness quite unusual in one so accustomed to remembering her weight of mortal flesh.

"Here!" she called, "you kind o' help me climb in. I ain't so spry as I was once. You better give me a real boost. But, land! I mustn't talk. I wouldn't git a mite of air into that tooth for a dollar bill."

Heman stepped into the house for his bass-viol, and brought it out with an extremity of tender care; he placed it, enveloped in its green baize covering, in the bottom of the pung. Some ludicrous association between the baize and the green _barège_ veil struck Brad so forcibly that he gave vent to a chuckle, sliding cleverly into a cough. He tried to meet Heman's eye, but Heman only motioned him to get in, and took his own place without a word. Brad wondered if he could be ill; his face had grown yellowish in its pallor, and he seemed to breathe heavily.

Midway in their drive to the vestry, they passed a woman walking briskly along in the snowy track. She was carrying her singing-books under one arm, and holding her head high with that proud lift which had seemed, more than anything else, to keep alive her girlhood's charm.

"There's Roxy," said Brad. "Here, Heman, you let me jump out, an' you give her a lift." But Heman looked straight before him, and drove on.

By the time they entered Tiverton Street, the vestry was full of chattering groups. Heman was the last to arrive. He made a long job of covering the horse, inside the shed, resolved that nothing should tempt him to face the general mirth at the Widder's entrance. For he could not deceive himself as to the world's amused estimate of her guardianship and his submission. He had even withdrawn from the School Board, where he had once been proud to figure, because, entering the schoolroom one day at recess, he had seen, on a confiscated slate at the teacher's desk, a rough caricature representing "Heman and his Ma." The Ma was at least half the size of the slate, while Heman was microscopic; but, alas! his inflamed consciousness found in both a resemblance which would mightily have surprised the artist. He felt that if he ever saw another testimony of art to his unworthiness, he might commit murder.

When he did muster courage to push open the vestry door, the Widder Poll sat alone by the stove, still unwinding her voluminous wrappings, and the singers had very pointedly withdrawn by themselves. Brad and Jont had begun to tune their fiddles, and the first prelusive snapping of strings at once awakened Heman's nerves to a pleasant tingling; he was excited at the nearness of the coming joy. He drew a full breath when it struck home to him, with the warm certainty of a happy truth, that if he did not look at her, even the Widder Poll could hardly spoil his evening. Everybody greeted him with unusual kindliness, though some could not refrain from coupling their word with a meaning glance at the colossal figure near the stove. One even whispered,--

"She treed ye, didn't she, Heman?"

He did not trust himself to answer, but drew the covering from his own treasure, and began his part of the delicious snapping and screwing.

"Where's Roxy?" called Jont Marshall "Can't do without her alto. Anybody seen her?"

Roxy was really very late, and Heman could not help wondering whether she had delayed in starting because she had expected a friendly invitation to ride, "All right," he reflected, bitterly. "She must get used to it."

The door opened, and Roxy came in. She had been walking fast, and her color was high. Heman stole one glance at her, under cover of the saluting voices. She was forty years old, yet her hair had not one silver thread, and at that instant of happy animation, she looked strikingly like her elder sister, to whom Heman used to give lozenges when they were boy and girl together, and who died in India. Then Roxy took her place, and Heman bent over his bass-viol. The rehearsal began. Heman forgot all about his keeper sitting by the stove, as the old, familiar tunes swelled up in the little room, and one antique phrase after another awoke nerve-cells all unaccustomed nowadays to thrilling. He could remember just when he first learned The Mellow Horn, and how his uncle, the sailor, had used to sing it. "Fly like a youthful hart or roe!" Were there spices still left on the hills of life? Ah, but only for youth to smell and gather! Boldly, with a happy bravado, the choir sang,--

"The British yoke, the Gallic chain,
Were placed upon our necks in vain!"

And then came the pious climax of Coronation, America, and the Doxology. Above the tumult of voices following the end of rehearsal, some one announced the decision to meet on Wednesday night; and Heman, his bass-viol again in its case, awoke, and saw the Widder putting on her green veil. Rosa Tolman nudged her intimate friend, Laura Pettis, behind Heman's back, and whispered,--

"I wonder if she's had a good time! There 'ain't been a soul for her to speak to, the whole evenin' long!"

The other girl laughed, with a delicious sense of fun in the situation, and Heman recoiled; the sound was like a blow in the face.

"Say, Heman," said Brad, speaking in his ear. "I guess I'll walk home, so't you can take in Roxy."

But Heman had bent his head, and was moving along with the rest, like a man under a burden.

"No," said he, drearily. "I can't. You come along."

His tone was quite conclusive; and Brad, albeit wondering, said no more. The three packed themselves into the pung, and drove away. Heman was conscious of some dull relief in remembering that he need not pass Roxy again on the road, for he heard her voice ring out clearly from a group near the church. He wondered if anybody would go home with her, and whether she minded the dark "spell o' woods" by the river. No matter! It was of no use. She must get used to her own company.

The Widder was almost torpid from her long sojourn by the stove; but the tingling air roused her at last, and she spoke, though mumblingly, remembering her tooth,--

"Proper nice tunes, wa'n't they? Was most on 'em new?"

But Brad could not hear, and left it for Heman to answer; and Heman gave his head a little restive shake, and said, "No." At his own gate, he stopped.

"I guess I won't car' you down home," he said to Brad.

It was only a stone's-throw, Brad hesitated.

"No, I, didn't mean for ye to," answered he, "but I'll stop an' help unharness."

"No," said Heman, gently. "You better not. I'd ruther do it." Even a friendly voice had become unbearable in his ears.

So, Brad, stepped down, lifted out his fiddle-case, and said good-night. Heman drove into the yard, and stopped before the kitchen door. He took the reins in one hand, and held out the other to the Widder.

"You be a mite careful o' your feet," he said. "That bass-viol slipped a little for'ard when we come down Lamson's Hill."

She rose ponderously. She seemed to sway and hesitate; then she set one foot cautiously forward in the pung. There was a rending, crash. The Widder Poll had stepped into the bass-viol. She gave a little scream; and plunged forward.

"My foot's ketched!" she cried. "Can't you help me out?"

Heman dropped the reins; he put his hands on her arms, and pulled her forward. He never knew whether she reached the ground on her feet or her knees. Then he pushed past her, where she floundered, and lifted out his darling. He carried it into the kitchen, and lighted the candle, with trembling hands. He drew back the cover. The bass-viol had its mortal wound; he could have laid both fists into the hole. He groaned.

"My God Almighty!" he said aloud.

The Widder Poll had stumbled into the room. She threw back her green veil, and her face shone ivory white under its shadow; her small eyes were starting. She looked like a culprit whom direst vengeance had overtaken at last. At the sound of her step, Heman lifted his hurt treasure, carried it tenderly into his bedroom, and shut the door upon it. He turned about, and walked past her out of the house. The Widder Poll followed him, wringing her mittened hands.

"O Heman!" she cried, "don't you look like that! Oh, you'll do yourself some mischief, I know you will!"

But Heman had climbed into the pung, and given Old Gameleg a vicious cut. Swinging out of the yard they went; and the Widder Poll ran after until, just outside the gate, she reflected that she never could overtake him and that her ankles were weak; then she returned to the house, groaning.

Heman was conscious of one thought only: if any man had come home with Roxy, he should kill him with his own hands. He drove on, almost to the vestry, and found no trace of her. He turned about, and, retracing his way, stopped at her mother's gate, left Old Gameleg, and strode into the yard. There was no light in the kitchen, and only a glimmer in the chamber above. Heman went up to the kitchen door and knocked. The chamber window opened.

"Who is it?" asked Mrs. Cole. "Why, that you, Heman? Anybody sick?"

"Where's Roxy?" returned Heman, as if he demanded her at the point of the bayonet.

"Why, she's been abed as much as ten minutes. The Tuckers brought her home."

"You tell her to come here! I want to see her."

"What! down there? Law, Heman! you come in the mornin'. She'll ketch her death o' cold gittin' up an' dressin', now she's got all warmed through."

"What's he want, mother?" came Roxy's clear voice from within the room. "That's Heman Blaisdell's voice."

"Roxy, you come down here!" called Heman, masterfully.

There was a pause, during which Mrs. Cole was apparently pulled away from the window. Then Roxy, her head enveloped in a shawl, appeared in her mother's place.

"Well!" she said, impatiently. "What is it?"

Heman's voice found a pleading level.

"Roxy, will you marry me?"

"Why, Heman, you 're perfectly ridiculous! At this time o' night, too!"

"You answer me!" cried Heman, desperately. "I want you! Won't you have me, Roxy? Say?"

"Roxy!" came her mother's muffled voice from the bed. "You'll git your death o' cold. What's he want? Can't you give him an answer an' let him go?"

"Won't you, Roxy?" called Heman. "Oh, won't you?"

Roxy began to laugh hysterically. "Yes," she said, and shut the window.

When Heman had put up the horse, he walked into the kitchen, and straight up to the Widder Poll, who stood awaiting him, clinging to the table by one fat hand.

"Now, look here!" he said, good-naturedly, speaking to her with a direct address he had not been able to use for many a month, "You listen to me. I don't want any hard feelin', but to-morrer mornin' you've got to pick up your things an' go. You can have the house down to the Holler, or you can go out nussin', but you come here by your own invitation, an' you've got to leave by mine. I'm goin' to be married as soon as I can git a license." Then he walked to the bedroom, and shut himself in with his ruined bass-viol and the darkness.

And the Widder Poll did not speak.

* * * * *

There are very few cosey evenings when Heman and Roxy do not smile at each other across the glowing circle of their hearth, and ask, the one or the other, with a perplexity never to be allayed,--

"Do you s'pose she tumbled, or did she put her foot through it a-purpose?"

But Heman is sure to conclude the discussion with a glowing tribute to Brad Freeman, his genius and his kindliness.

"I never shall forgit that o' Brad," he announces. "There wa'n't another man in the State o' New Hampshire could ha' mended it as he did. Why, you never'd know there was a brack in it!"

HEARTSEASE.

"For as for heartsease, it groweth in a single night."

"What be you doin' of, Mis' Lamson?" asked Mrs. Pettis, coming in from the kitchen, where she had been holding a long conversation with young Mrs. Lamson on the possibility of doing over sugar-barberry. Mrs. Pettis was a heavy woman, bent almost double with rheumatism, and she carried a baggy umbrella for a cane. She was always sighing over the difficulty of "gittin' round the house," but nevertheless she made more calls than any one else in the neighborhood. "It kind o' limbered her up," she said, "to take a walk after she had been bendin' over the dish-pan."

Mrs. Lamson looked up with an alert, bright glance. She was a little creature, and something still girlish lingered in her straight, slender figure and the poise of her head. "Old Lady Lamson" was over eighty, and she dressed with due deference to custom; but everything about her gained, in the wearing, an air of youth. Her aggressively brown front was rumpled a little, as if it had tried to crimp itself, only to be detected before the operation was well begun, and the purple ribbons of her cap flared rakishly aloft.

"I jest took up a garter," she said, with some apology in her tone. "Kind o' fiddlin' work, ain't it?"

"Last time I was here, you was knittin' mittins," continued Mrs. Pettis, seating herself laboriously on the lounge, and leaning forward upon the umbrella clutched steadily in two fat hands. "You're dretful forehanded. I remember I said so then. 'Samwel 'ain't got a mittin, to his name,' I says, 'nor he won't have 'fore November.'"

"Well, I guess David's pretty well on't for everything now," answered Mrs. Lamson, with some pride. "He's got five pair o' new mittins, an' my little blue chist full o' stockin's. I knit 'em two-an'-two, an' two-an'-one, an' toed some on 'em off with white, an' some with red, so's to keep 'em in pairs. But Mary said I better not knit any more, for fear the moths'd git into 'em, an' so I stopped an' took up this garter. But _'tis_ dretful fiddlin' work!"

A brief silence fell upon the two, while the sweet summer scents stole in at the window,--the breath of the cinnamon rose, of growing, grass and good brown earth. Mrs. Pettis pondered, looking vacantly before her, and Old Lady Lamson knit hastily on. Her needles clicked together, and she turned her work with a jerk in beginning a row. But neither was oppressed by lack of speech. They understood each other, and no more thought of "making talk" than of pulling up a seed to learn whether it had germinated. It was Mrs. Pettis who, after, a natural interval; felt moved to speak.

"Mary's master thoughtful of you, ain't she? 'Tain't many sons' wives would be so tender of, anybody, now is it?"

Mrs. Lamson looked up sharply, and then, with the same quick movement; bent her eyes on her work.

"Mary means to do jest what's right," she answered. "If she don't make out, it ain't for lack o' tryin'."

"So I says to Samwel this mornin, 'Old Lady Lamson 'ain't one thing to concert herself with,' says I, 'but to git dressed an' set by the winder. When dinner-time comes, she's got nothin' to do but hitch up to the table; an' she don't have to touch her hand to a dish.' Now ain't that so, Mis' Lamson?"

"That's so," agreed Mrs. Lamson, with a little sigh, instantly suppressed. "It's different from what I thought to myself 'twould be when Mary come here. ''Tain't in natur' she'll have the feelin' for me she would for her own,' I says; but I b'lieve she has, an' more too. When she come for good, I made up my mind I'd put 'Up with everything, an' say 'twas all in the day's work; but law! I never had to. She an' David both act as if I was sugar or salt, I dunno which."

"Don't ye never help 'round, washin'-days?"

"Law, no! Mary won't hear to 't. She'd ruther have the dishes wait till everything's on the line; an' if I stir a step to go into the gardin to pick a 'mess o' beans, or kill a currant worm, she's right arter me. 'Mother, don't you fall!' she says, a dozen 'times a day. 'I dunno what David'd do to me, if I let anything happen to you.' An' 'David, he's ketched it, too. One night, 'long towards Thanksgivin' time, I kicked the soapstone out o' bed, an' he come runnin' up as if he was bewitched. 'Mother,' says he, 'did you fall? You 'ain't had a stroke, have ye?'"

Old Lady Lamson laughed huskily; her black eyes shone, and her cap ribbons nodded, and danced, but there was an ironical ring to her merriment.

"Do tell!" responded Mrs. Pettis, in her ruminating voice. "Well, things were different when we was young married folks, an' used to do our own spinnin' an' weavin'."

"I guess so!" Mrs. Lamson dropped her busy hands in her lap, and leaned back a moment, in eager retrospect. "Do you recollect that Friday we spun from four o'clock in the mornin' till six that evenin', because the men-folks had gone in the ma'sh, an' all we had to do was to stop an' feed the critters? An' Hiram Peasley come along with tinware, an' you says, 'If you're a mind to stop at my house, an' throw a colander an' a long-handled dipper over the fence, under the flowerin'-currant, an' wait till next time for your pay, I'll take 'em,' says you. 'But I ain't goin' to leave off spinnin' for anything less 'n Gabriel's trumpet,' says you. I remember your sayin' that, as if 'twas only yisterday; an' arter you said it, you kind o' drawed down your face an' looked scairt. An' I never thought on't ag'in till next Sabbath evenin', when Jim Bellows rose to speak, an' made some handle about the Day o' Judgment, an' then I tickled right out."

"How you do set by them days!" said Mrs. Pettis, striving to keep a steady face, though her heavy sides were shaking. "I guess you remember 'em better 'n your prayers!"

"Yes, I laughed out loud, an' you passed me a pep'mint over the pew, an' looked as if you was goin' to cry. 'Don't,' says you; an' it sort o' come over me you knew what I was laughin' at. Why, if there ain't John Freeman stoppin' here,--Mary's sister's brother-in-law, you know. Lives down to Bell P'int. Guess he's pullin' up to give the news."

Mrs. Pettis came slowly to her feet, and scanned the farmer, who was hitching his horse to the fence. When he had gone round to the back door, she turned, and grasped her umbrella with a firmer hand.

"Well, I guess 'twon't pay me to set down ag'in," she announced. "I'm goin' to take it easy on the way home. I dunno but I'll let down the bars, an' poke a little ways into the north pastur', an' see if I can't git a mite o' pennyr'yal. I'll be in ag'in to-morrer or next day."

"So do, so do," returned Mrs. Lamson.

"'Tain't no use to ask you to come down, I s'pose? You don't git, out so fur, nowadays."

"No," said the other, still with that latent touch of sarcasm in her voice. "If I should fall, there'd be a great hurrah, boys,--'fire on the mountain, run, boys, run!'"

Mrs. Pettis toiled out into the road; and Old Lady Lamson, laying her knitting on the table, bent forward, not to watch her out of sight, but to make sure whether she really would stop at the north pasture.

"No, she's goin' by," she said aloud, with evident relief. "No, she ain't either. I'll be whipped if she ain't lettin' down the bars! _'Twould_ smell kind o' good, I declare!"

She was still peering forward, one slender hand on the window-sill, when Mary, a pretty young woman, with two nervous lines between her eyes, came hurrying in.

"Mother," she began, in that unnatural voice which is supposed to allay excitement in another, "I dunno what I'm goin' to do. Stella's sick."

"You don't say!" said Old Lady Lamson, turning away from the window. "What do they think 'tis?"

"Fever, John says. An' she's so full-blooded it'll be likely to go hard with her. They want me to go right down, an' David's got to carry me. John would, but he's gone to be referee in that land case, an' he won't be back for a day or two. It's a mercy David's just home from town, so he won't have to change his clo'es right through. Now, mother, if you should have little 'Liza Tolman come an' stay with you, do you think anything would happen, s'posin' we left you alone just one night?"

A little flush rose in the old lady's withered cheek. Her eyes gleamed brightly through her glasses.

"Don't you worry one mite about me," she replied, in an even voice. "You change your dress, an' git off afore it's dark. I shall be all right."

"David's harnessin' now," said Mary, beginning to untie her apron. "I sent John down to the lower barn to call him. But, mother, if anything should happen to you--"

"Lord-a-massy! nothin' 's goin' to!" the old lady broke forth, in momentary impatience. "Don't stan' here talkin'. You better have your mind on Stella. Fever's a quicker complaint than old age. It al'ays was, an' al'ays will be."

"Oh, I know it! I know it!" cried Mary, starting toward the door. "There ain't a thing for you to do. There's new bread an' preserves on the dairy-wheel, an' you have 'Liza Tolman pick you up some chips, an' build the fire for your tea; an' don't you wash the dishes, mother. Just leave 'em in the sink. An' for mercy sake, take a candle, an' not meddle with kerosene--"

"Come, come, ain't you ready?" came David's voice from the door. "I can't keep the horse stan'in' here till he's all eat up with flies."

Mary fled to her bedroom, unbuttoning her dress as she ran; and David came in, bringing an air of outdoor freshness into the little sitting-room, with his regal height, his broad shoulders, and tanned, fresh face.

"Well, mother," he said, putting a hand of clumsy kindliness on her shoulder, "if anything happens to you while we're gone, I shall wish we'd let the whole caboodle of 'em die in their tracks. Don't s'pose anything will, do ye?"

"Law, no, David!" exclaimed the old lady, looking at him with beaming pride. "You stan' still an' let me pick that mite o' lint off your arm. I shall be tickled to death to git rid on ye."

"Now, mother," counselled Mary, when she came but of the bedroom, hastily tying her bonnet strings, "you watch the school-children, an' ask 'Liza Tolman to stay with you, an' if she can't, to get one of the Daltons; an' tell her we'll give her some Bartlett pears when they're ripe."

"Yes, yes, I hear," answered the old lady, rising, and setting back her chair in its accustomed corner. "Now, do go along, or ye won't be down to Grapevine Run afore five o'clock."

She watched them while they drove out of the yard, shading her eyes with one nervous hand.

"Mother," called Mary, "don't you stan' there in that wind, with nothin' on your head!"

The old lady turned back into the house, and her face was alive with glee.

"Wind!" she ejaculated scornfully, and yet with the tolerance of one too happy for complaint. "Wind! I guess there wouldn't be so much, if some folks would save their breath to cool their porridge!"

She did not go back to the sitting-room and her peaceful knitting. She walked into the pantry, where she gave the shelves a critical survey, and then, returning to the kitchen, looked about her once more.

"If it's one day sence I've been down sullar," she said aloud, "it's two year." She 'was lighting a candle as she spoke. In another moment, she was taking sprightly steps down the stairs into the darkness below.

"Now, mother, don't you fall!" she chuckled, midway in the descent; and it was undeniable that the voice sounded much like Mary's in her anxious mood. "Now, ain't I a mean creatur' to stan' here laughin' at 'em!" she went on: "Well,' if she don't keep things nice! 'Taters all sprouted; an' the preserve cupboard never looked better in my day. Mary's been well brought up,--I'll say that for her."

Old Lady Lamson must have spent at least half an hour in the cellar, for when she ascended it was after four o'clock, and the school-children had passed the house on their way home. She heard their voices under the elms at the turn of the road.

"I ain't to blame if I can't ketch 'em," she remarked calmly, as she blew out her light. "I don't see's anybody could say I was to blame. An' I couldn't walk up to the Tolmans' to ask 'Liza. I might fall!"

She set about her preparations for supper. It was a favorite maxim in the household that the meal should be eaten early, "to get it out of the way;" and to-night this unaccustomed handmaid had additional reasons for haste. But the new bread and preserves were ignored. She built a rousing fire in the little kitchen stove; she brought out the moulding-board, and with trembling eagerness proceeded to mix cream-of-tartar biscuits. Not Cellini himself nor Jeannie Carlyle had awaited the results of passionate labor with a more strenuous eagerness; and when she drew out the panful of delicately browned biscuits, she set it down on the table, and looked at it in sheer delight.

"I'll be whipped if they ain't as good as if I'd made 'em every night for the last two year!" she cried. "I ain't got to git my hand in, an' that's truth an' fact!"

She brought out some "cold b'iled dish," made her strong green tea, and sat down to a banquet such as they taste who have reached the Delectable Mountains. It held within it all the savor of a happy past; it satisfied her hungry soul.

After she had washed the supper dishes and scrupulously swept the hearth, she rested, for a moment's thought, in the old rocking-chair, and then took her way, candle in hand, to the attic. There was no further self-confidence on the stairs; she was too serious, now. Her hours were going fast. The attic, in spite of the open windows, lay hot under summer's touch upon the shingles outside, and odorous of the dried herbs hanging in bunches here and there.

"Wormwood--thoroughwort--spearmint," she mused, as she touched them, one after another, and inhaled their fragrance. "'Tain't so long ago I was out pickin' herbs an' dryin' 'em. Well, well, well!"

She made her way under the eaves, and pulled out a hair-trunk, studded with brass nails. A rush-bottomed chair stood near-by, and, setting her candle in it, she knelt before the trunk and began lifting out its contents: a brocaded satin waistcoat of a long-past day, a woolen comforter knit in stripes, a man's black broadcloth coat. She smoothed them, as she laid them by, and there was a wondering note in her lowered voice.

"My Lord!" she whispered reverently, as if speaking to One who would hear and understand, "it's over fifty year!"

A pile of yellowed linen lay in the bottom of the trunk, redolent of camphor from contact with its perishable neighbors. She lifted one shirt after another, looking at them in silence. Then she laid back the other clothes, took up her candle and the shirts, and went downstairs again. In hot haste, she rebuilt the kitchen fire, and set two large kettles of water on the stove. She dragged the washing-bench into the back kitchen from its corner in the shed, and on it placed her tubs; and when the water was heated, she put the garments into a tub, and rubbed with the vigor and ease of a woman well accustomed to such work. All the sounds of the night were loud about her, and the song of the whippoorwill came in at the open door. He was very near. His presence should have been a sign of approaching trouble, but Old Lady Lamson did not hear him. Her mind was reading the lettered scroll of a vanished year.

Perhaps the touch of the warm water on her hands recalled her to the present.

"Seems good to feel the suds," she said, happily, holding up one withered hand, and letting the foam drip from her fingers, "I wish't I could dry outdoor! But when mornin' come, they'd be all of a sop."

She washed and rinsed the garments, and, opening a clothes-horse, spread them out to dry. Then she drew a long breath, put out her candle, and wandered to the door. The garden lay before her, unreal in the beauty of moonlight. Every bush seemed an enchanted wood. The old lady went forth, lingering at first, as one too rich for choosing; then with a firmer step. She closed the little gate, and walked out into the country road. She hurried along to the old signboard, and turned aside unerringly into a hollow, there, where she stooped and filled her hands with tansy, pulling it up in great bunches, and pressing it eagerly to her face.

"Seventy-four year ago!" she told the unseen listener of the night, with the same wonder in her voice. "Sir laid dead, an' they sent me down here to pick tansy to put round him. Seventy-four year ago!"

Still holding it; she rose, and went through the bars into the dewy lane. Down the wandering path, trodden daily by the cows, she walked, and came out in the broad pasture, irregular with its little hillocks, where, as she had been told from her babyhood, the Indians used to plant their corn. She entered the woods by a cart-path hidden from the moon, and went on with a light step, gathering a bit of green here and there,--now hemlock, now a needle from the sticky pine,--and inhaling its balsam on her hands. A sharp descent, and she had reached the spot where the brook ran fast, and where lay "Peggy's b'ilin' spring," named for a great-aunt she had never seen, but whose gold beads she had inherited, and who had consequently seemed to her a person of opulence and ease.

"I wish't I'd brought a cup," she said. "There ain't no such water within twenty mile."

She crouched beside the little black pool, where the moon glinted in mysterious, wavering, symbols to beckon the gaze upward, and, making a cup of her hand, drank eagerly. There was a sound near-by, as if some wood creature were stirring; she thought she heard a fox barking in the distance. Yet she was really conscious only of the wonder of time, the solemn record of the fleeting years.

When she made her way back through the woods, the moon was sinking, and the shadows had grown heavy. As she reached the bars again, on her homeward track, she stopped suddenly, and her face broke into smiling at the pungent fragrance rising from the bruised herbage beneath her feet. She stooped and gathered one telltale, homely weed, mixed as it was with the pasture grass. "Pennyr'yal," she said happily, and felt the richness of being.

When Old Lady Lamson had ironed her shirts and put them away again, all hot and sweet from the fire, it was five o'clock, and the birds had long been trying to drag creation up from sleep, to sing with them the wonders of the dawn. At six, she had her cup of tea, and when, at eight, her son drove into the yard, she came placidly to the side door to meet him, her knitting in her hands.

"Well, if I ain't glad!" called David. "I couldn't git it out o' my mind somethin' 'd happened to you. Stella's goin' to be all right, they think, but nothin' will do but Mary must stay a spell. Do you s'pose you an' I could keep house a week or so, if I do the heft o' the work?"

Old Lady Lamson's eyes took on the look which sometimes caused her son to inquire suspiciously, "Mother, what you laughin' at?"

"I guess we can, if we try hard enough," she said, soberly, rolling up her yarn. "Now you come in, an' I'll git you a bite o' somethin' t'eat."

MIS' WADLEIGH'S GUEST.

Cyrus Pendleton sat by the kitchen fire, his stockinged feet, in the oven, and his; hands stretched out toward the kettles, which were bubbling prosperously away, and puffing a cloud of steam, into his face. He was a meagre, sad-colored man, with mutton-chop whiskers so thin as to lie like a shadow on his fallen cheeks; and his glance, wherever it fell, Seemed to deprecate reproof. Thick layers of flannel swathed his throat, and from time to time, he coughed wheezingly, with the air of one who, having a cold, was determined to be conscientious about it. A voice from the buttery began pouring forth words only a little slower than the blackbird sings, and with no more reference to reply.

"Cyrus, don't you feel a mite better? Though I dunno how you could, expect to, arter such a night as you had on't, puffin' an' blowin'!" Mrs. Pendleton followed the voice. She seemed to be borne briskly in on its wings, and came scudding over the kitchen sill, carrying a pan of freshly sifted flour. She set it down on the table, and began "stirrin' up." "I dunno where you got such a cold, unless it's in the air," she continued. "Folks say they're round, nowadays, an' you ketch 'em, jest as you would the mumps. But there! nobody on your side or mine ever had the mumps, as long as I can remember. Except Elkanah, though! an' he ketched 'em down to Portsmouth, when he went off on that fool's arrant arter elwives. Do you s'pose you could eat a mite o' fish for dinner?"

"I was thinkin'--" interposed Cyrus, mildly; but his wife swept past him, and took the road.

"I dunno's there's any use in gittin' a real dinner, jest you an' me, an' you not workin' either. Folks say there's more danger of eatin' too much'n too little. Gilman Lane, though, he kep' eatin' less an' less, an' his stomach dried all up, till 'twa'n't no bigger'n a bladder. Look here, you! I shouldn't wonder a mite if you'd got some o' them stomach troubles along with your cold. You 'ain't acted as if you'd relished a meal o' victuals for nigh onto ten days. Soon as I git my hands out o' the flour, I'll look in the doctor's book, an' find out. My! how het up I be!" She wiped her hands on the roller towel, and unpinned the little plaid shawl drawn tightly across her shoulders, Its removal disclosed a green sontag, and under that manifold layers of jacket and waist. She was amply protected from the cold. "I dunno's I ought to ha' stirred up rye'n' Injun," she went on, returning to her vigorous tossing and mixing at the table. "Some might say the steam was bad for your lungs. Anyhow, the doctor's book holds to't you've got to pick out a dry climate, if you don't want to go into a decline. Le' me see! when your Aunt Mattie was took, how long was it afore she really gi'n up? Arter she begun to cough, I mean?"

Cyrus moved uneasily.

"I dunno," he said, hastily. "I never kep' the run o' such things."

But Mirandy, pouring her batter into the pan, heeded him no more than was her wont.

"I s'pose that was real gallopin' consumption," she said, with relish." I must ask Sister Sarah how long 'twas, next time I see her. She set it down with the births an' deaths."

Cyrus was moved to some remonstrance. He often felt the necessity of asserting himself, lest he should presently hear his own passing-bell and epitaph.

"I guess you needn't stop steamin' bread for me! I ain't half so stuffed up as I was yisterday!"

Mrs. Pendleton clapped the loaf into the pot, wrinkling her face over the cloud of steam that came puffing into it.

"There!" she exclaimed. "Now perhaps I can git a minute to se' down. I ain't bound a shoe to-day. My! who's that out this weather?"

The side door was pushed open, and then shut with a bang. A vigorous stamping of snow followed, and the inner door swung in to admit a woman, very short, very stout, with a round, apple-cheeked face, and twinkling eyes looking out from the enveloping folds of a gray cloud.

"Well!" she said, in a cheery voice, beginning at once to unwind the cloud, "here I be! Didn't think I'd rain down, did ye? I thought myself, one spell, I should freeze afore I fell!"

Mrs. Pendleton hurried forward, wiping her hands on her apron as she went.

"For the land's sake, Marthy Wadleigh!" she cried, laying hold of the new-comer by the shoulders, and giving her an ineffectual but wholly delighted shake. "Well, I never! Who brought you over? Though I dunno which way you come. I 'ain't looked out--"

"I walked from the corner," said Mrs. Wadleigh, who never felt any compunction about interrupting her old neighbor. She was unpinning her shawl composedly, as one sure of a welcome. "How do, Cyrus? Jim Thomas took me up jest beyond the depot, an' give me a lift on his sled; but I was all of a shiver, an' at the corner, I told him he better let me step down an' walk. So I come the rest o' the way afoot an' alone. You ain't goin' to use the oven, be ye? I'll jest stick my feet in a minute. No, Cyrus, don't you move! I'll take t'other side. I guess we sha'n't come to 'blows over it."

She seemed to have brought into the kitchen, with that freshness of outdoor air which the new-comer bears, like a balsam, in his garments, a breath of fuller life, and even of jollity. As she sat there in her good brown dress, with her worked collar, fastened by a large cameo, her gold beads just showing, and her plump hands folded on a capacious lap, she looked the picture of jovial content, quite able to take care of herself, and perhaps apply a sturdy shoulder to the lagging machinery of the world.

"Didn't you git word I was comin' this week?" she asked. "I sent you a line."

"No, we 'ain't been so fur's the post-office," answered Mirandy, absently. She was debating over her most feasible bill of fare, now that a "pick-up dinner" seemed no longer possible. Moreover, she had something on her mind, and she could not help thinking how unfortunate it was that Cyrus shared her secret. Who could tell at what moment he might broach it? She doubted his discretion. "The roads wa'n't broke out till day before yisterday."

"I shouldn't think they were!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, scornfully, testing the heat with a hand on her skirt, and then lifting the breadths back over her quilted petticoat. "I thought that would be the way on't, but I'd made up my mind to come, an' come I would. Cyrus, what's the matter o' you? Nothin' more'n a cold, is it?"

Cyrus had withdrawn from the stove, and was feeling his chin, uncertainly.

"Oh, no, I guess not," he said. "We've been kind o' peaked, for a week or two, all over the neighborhood; but I guess we shall come out on't, now we've got into the spring. Mirandy, you git me a mite o' hot water, an' I'll see if I can't shave."

Mirandy was vigorously washing potatoes at the sink, but she turned, in ever-ready remonstrance.

"Shave!" she ejaculated, "Well, I guess you won't shave, such a day as this, in that cold bedroom, with a stockin'-leg round your throat, an' all! You want to git your death? Why, 'twas only last night, Marthy, he had a hemlock sweat, an' all the ginger tea I could git down into him! An' then I didn't know--"