"The poor little thing," says I. "Well, mustn't we be good to her?"
"Mustn't we?" says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, wiping her eyes.
"Must we not?" says Mis' Silas Sykes--that would correct your grammar if
the house was on fire.
My niece's daughter Letty had lost her father and her mother within a
year, and she was coming to spend the summer with me.
"She's going to pick out the style monument she wants here in town," I
says, "and maybe buy it."
"Poor thing! That'll give her something to put her mind on," says Mis'
Sykes.
George Fred come in just then to fill my wood-box--his father was bound
he should be named George and his mother hung out for Fred, so he got
both onto him permanent. He was going to business college, and choring
it for near the whole town. He used to swallow his supper and rush like
mad from wood-box to cow all over the village. Nights when I heard a
noise, I never thought it was a burglar any more. I turned over again
and thought: "That's George Fred cutting somebody's grass." I never see
a man more bent on getting himself educated.
"George Fred," I says, "my grandniece Letty is coming to live with me.
She's lost her folks. I thought we'd kind of try to be good to her."
"Trust me," says George Fred. "My cousin Jed, he lost his folks too. I
can tell her about him."
The next day Letty came. I hadn't seen her for years. My land! when she
got off the train, I never saw plainer. She was a nice little thing, but
plain eyes, plain nose, plain mouth, and her hair--that was less than
plain. But she was so smiling and so gentle that the plain part never
bothered me a minute.
"Letty," says I, "welcome home." Mis' Merriman and Mis' Sykes had gone
to the depot with me.
"Welcome home, child," says Mis' Merriman, and wiped her eyes! Mis'
Merriman is human, but tactless.
"Welcome home, you poor thing," says Mis' Sykes, and she sniffed.
Everything Mis' Sykes does she ought to have picked out to do the way
she didn't.
But Letty, she took it serene enough. While we were getting her trunk,
Mis' Sykes whispered to me:
"Are you sure she's the right niece? She ain't got on a stitch of
mourning."
Sure enough, she hadn't. She wore a little blue dress.
"Like enough she couldn't afford it," says Mis' Merriman. And we
thought that must be it.
They were both to stay for supper, and they'd each brought a little
present for my niece. When she opened them, one was a black-edged
handkerchief and the other was a package of mixed flower-seeds to plant
next spring in her cemetery lot. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman were both
ready to cry all the while she untied them. But Letty smiled, serene,
and thanked them, serene too, and put a pink aster from the table in her
dress, and said, couldn't we go out and look at my flowers? And we went,
Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman folding up their handkerchiefs and
exchanging surprised eyebrows.
At the back door we came, plain in the face, on George Fred, whittling
up my shavings.
"Two baskets of shavings, Miss Marsh, or one?"
"I guess," says I, "you'll earn your education better if you bring me in
two."
George Fred never smiled. "I ain't earning my education any more, Miss
Marsh," he says. "I've give it up. I can't make it go--not and chore
it."
"Then you can't be a bookkeeper, George Fred?" I says.
"I've took a job delivering for the post-office store."
"Tell me about it, won't you?" says Letty.
George Fred told her a little about it, whittling my shavings.
"There ain't enough cows and grass and wood-boxes in the village to
make it go, seems though," he ends up.
Then he rushed into the house with my stuff, and headed for the Sykes's
cow that we could hear lowing.
We talked about George Fred while we looked at the flowers, Letty all
interested in both of them, and then we came back and sat on the front
porch.
"Dear child," says Mis' Sykes, "wouldn't it be a comfort to you, now
that you're among friends, to talk about your folks? What was it they
died of? Was they sick long?"
Letty looked over to her, sweet and serene.
"Beautiful things happened while they were sick," she said. "A little
child across the street used to come every morning with a flower or a
fresh egg. Then there was an old man who picked every rose in his garden
and sent them in. And a club there hired a singer who was at the theater
to come and serenade them, just a few days before. Oh, so many beautiful
things happened!"
Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman sat still. This isn't the way we talk about
sickness in the village. We always tell symptoms and treatments and pain
and last words and funeral preparations, right up to the time the hearse
backs up to the door.
"She acts the queerest, to me, for a mourner," says Mis' Sykes, when she
went for her shawl.
Next morning we went down, Letty and me, to pick out the monument.
Letty, she priced them, and then she figured some on a card. Then she
walked over and priced some more things, and then she came out. I
s'posed she was going to think about it.
"Didn't she cry when she picked out the monument?" says Mis' Sykes to me
over the telephone that noon.
"I didn't see her," says I, truthful.
That night, after he got the last cow milked, I see George Fred, in his
best clothes, coming in our front gate. He was coming, I see, to do what
I said--help be good to Letty and cheer her up.
"Miss Letty," says he, "I know just how you feel. My cousin Jed, he lost
his folks a year ago. They took down with the typhoid, and they suffered
frightful--"
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Fred," says Letty.
I explained. "Fred," says I, "is his other front name. His final name is
Backus."
She colored up pretty, and went right on--it was curious: she hadn't
been with me twenty-four hours hardly, and yet she didn't look a bit
plain to me now.
"Mr. Backus," Letty says, "I've been thinking. Miss Marsh and I have got
a little money we're not using. Don't you want to borrow it, and keep on
at business college, and pay us back when you can?"
"Gosh!" says George Fred.
If I hadn't been aiming to be a lady, I dunno what I might have said
similar.
They talked about it, and then George Fred went off, walking some on the
ground and some in the air. "Letty!" says I, then, "where in this
world--"
"Why," says Letty, "I'm going to get just headstones instead of a
monument--and leave that boy be a bookkeeper instead of a delivery boy.
Father and mother--" it was the only time I heard her catch her breath
sharp--"would both rather. I know it."
Before breakfast next morning, I ran over to Mis' Sykes's and Mis'
Merriman's, and told them.
"Like enough she done something better than buy mourning, too," says
Mis' Merriman.
It was the first and only time in my life I ever see Mis' Silas Sykes's
eyes fill up with tears.
"Why, my land," she says, "she's _using_ her sorrow."
And all of a sudden, the morning and the world meant something more. And
Letty, that we were going to be so good to, had brought us something
like a present.