HIEL AND NABBY.
"Only think, Hiel, Dolly's going to Boston," said Nabby, when they
had seated themselves cosily with the infant Zeph between them at the
supper-table.
"Ye don't say so, now!" said Hiel, with the proper expression of
surprise.
"Yes, Miss Kittery, her Boston aunt, 's comin' next week, and I'm
goin' in to do up her muslins for her. Yes, Dolly 's goin' to Boston."
"Good!" said Hiel. "I hope she'll get a husband there."
"That's jest all you men think of," answered Nabby. "Dolly ain't
one o' that kind; she ain't lookin' out for fellers--though there's
plenty would be glad to have her. She ain't one o' that sort."
"Wal," said Hiel, "she's too good-lookin' to be let alone; she'll
_hev_ to hev somebody."
"Oh, there's enough after her," said Nabby. "There was that Virginny
fellow in Judge Belcher's office, waitin' on her home from meetin'
and wanting to be her beau; she wouldn't have nothin' to say to him.
Then there was that academy teacher used to walk home with her, and
carry her books and go with her to singin' school; but Dolly didn't
want him. And there's Abner--he jest worships the ground she treads
on; and she's jest good friends with him. She's good friends with 'em
all round, but come to case in hand she don't want any on 'em."
"Wal, there ain't nothin' but the doctrine o' 'lection for such
gals," said Hiel. "When the one they's decreed to marry comes along
then their time comes, jest as yours and mine did, Nabby."
The conversation was here interrupted by the infant Zeph, who had
improved the absorbed state of his parents' minds to carry out a plan
he had been some time meditating, of upsetting the molasses pitcher.
This was done with such celerity that before they could make a move
both his fat hands were triumphantly spatted into the brown river,
and he gave a crow of victory.
"There! clean table-cloth this very night! Did I ever see such a
young un!" cried Nabby, as she caught him away from the table.
"Father thinks he's perfection. I should like to have him have
the care of him once," she added, bustling and brightening and
laughing as she scolded; while Hiel, making perfectly sincere but
ill-directed efforts to scrape up the molasses with a spoon,
succeeded only in distributing it pretty equally over the table-cloth.
"Well, now, if there ain't a pair of you!" said Nabby, when she
returned to the table. "If that ain't jest like a man!"
"Wal, what would ye hev me--like a girl, or a dog, or what?" asked
Hiel, as he stood, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the
scene. "I did my best; but I ain't used to managing molasses and
babies together; that's a fact."
"It's lucky Mother went out to tea," said Nabby, as she whisked off
the tablecloth, wiped the table, re-clothed it with a clean one, and
laid the supper dishes back in a twinkling. "Now, Hiel, we'll try
again; and be sure and put things where _he_ can't get 'em; he does
beat all for mischief!"
And the infant phenomenon, who had had his face washed and his apron
changed in the interim, looked up confidingly in the face of each
parent and crowed out a confident laugh.
"Don't let's tell Mother," said Nabby; "she's always sayin' we don't
govern him; and I'm sure she spoils him more than we do; but if she'd
been here she wouldn't get over it for a week."
In fact, the presence of Mother Jones in the family was the only
drawback on Nabby's domestic felicity, that good lady's virtues, as
we have seen, being much on the plaintive and elegiac order. There
is indeed a class of elderly relatives who, their work in life being
now over, have nothing to do but sit and pass criticisms on the
manner in which younger pilgrims are bearing the heat and burden of
the day.
Although Nabby was confessedly one of the most capable and energetic
of housekeepers, though everything in her domestic domains fairly
shone and glittered with neatness, though her cake always rose even,
though her bread was the whitest, her biscuits the lightest, and
her doughnuts absolute perfection, yet Mother Jones generally sat
mildly swaying in her rocking-chair and declaring herself consumed by
care--and averring that she had "_everything_ on her mind." "I don't
_do_ much, but I feel the care of everything," the old lady would
remark in a quavering voice. "Young folks is so thoughtless; they
don't feel care as I do."
At first Nabby was a little provoked at this state of things; but
Hiel only laughed it off.
"Oh, let her talk. Mother _likes_ to feel care; she wants something
to worry about; she'd be as forlorn as a hen without a nest-egg if
she hadn't that. Don't you trouble your head, Nabby, so long as I
don't."
For all that, Nabby congratulated herself that Mother Jones was not
at the tea-table, for the nurture and admonition of young Zeph was
one of her most fruitful and weighty sources of care. She was always
declaring that "children was sech an awful responsibility, that she
wondered that folks dared to git married!" She laid down precepts,
strict even to ferocity, as to the early necessity of prompt,
energetic government, and of breaking children's wills; and then gave
master Zeph everything he cried for, and indulged all his whims with
the most abject and prostrate submission.
"I know I hadn't orter," she would say, when confronted with this
patent inconsistency; "but then I ain't his mother. I ain't got the
responsibility; and the fact is he _will_ have things and I _hev_
to let him. His parents orter break his will, but they don't; it's
a great care to me;" and Mother Jones would end by giving him the
sugar-bowl to play with, and except for the immutable laws of nature
she would doubtless have given him the moon or any part of the solar
system that he had cried for.
Nevertheless, let it not be surmised that Mother Jones,
notwithstanding the minor key in which she habitually indulged, was
in the least unhappy. There are natures to whom the "unleavened bread
and bitter herbs" of life are an agreeable and strengthening diet,
and Mother Jones took real pleasure in everything that went to show
that this earth was a vale of tears. A funeral was a most enlivening
topic for her, and she never allowed an opportunity to pass within
riding distance without giving it her presence, and dwelling on all
the details of the state of the "corpse" and the minutiæ of the
laying-out for weeks after, so that her presence at table between
her blooming son and daughter answered all the moral purposes of the
skeleton which the ancient Egyptians kept at their feasts. Mother
Jones also, in a literal sense, "_enjoyed_ poor health" and petted
her coughs and her rheumatisms, and was particularly discomposed
with any attempt to show her that she was getting better. Yet when
strictly questioned the good lady always admitted, though with a
mournful shake of the head, that she had everything to be thankful
for--that Hiel was a good son, and Nabby was a good daughter, and
'since Hiel had jined the church and hed prayers in his family, she
hoped he'd hold on to the end--though it really worried her to see
how light and triflin' he was.'
In fact Hiel, though maintaining on the whole a fairly consistent
walk and profession, was undoubtedly a very gleesome church member,
and about as near Mother Jones's idea of a saint as a bobolink on a
clover-top. There was a worldly twinkle in his eye, and the lines
of his cheery face grew rather broad than long, and his mother's
most lugubrious suggestions would often set him off in a story that
would upset even the old lady's gravity and bring upon her pangs of
repentance. For the spiritual danger and besetting sin that Mother
Jones more especially guarded against was an "undue levity;" but
when she remembered that Dr. Cushing himself and all the neighboring
clergymen, on an occasion of a "ministers' meeting" when she had
been helping in the family, had vied with each other in telling good
stories, and shaken their sides with roars of heartiest laughter,
she was somewhat consoled about Hiel. She confessed it was a mystery
to her, however, 'how folks could hev the heart to be a-laughin' and
tellin' stories in sich a dying world.'