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.