"Pomona!" I exclaimed. "You didn't tell him that?"
"That's what I said, sir, for I wanted him to know what you really
was; an' he says, 'Well, well, I never knew that. It might be a very
good thing. I'll speak to some of the members about it. There's two
vacancies now in our vestry.'"
I was crushed; but Euphemia tried to put the matter into the brightest
light.
"Perhaps it may all turn out for the best," she said, "and you may be
elected, and that would be splendid. But it would be an awfully funny
thing for a dog-fight to make you a vestry-man."
I could not talk on this subject. "Go on, Pomona," I said, trying to
feel resigned to my shame, "and tell us about that poster on the fence."
"I'll be to that almost right away," she said.
"It was two or three days after the dog-fight that I was down at the
barn, and happenin' to look over to old John's, I saw that tree-man
there. He was a-showin' his book to John, and him and his wife and all
the young ones was a-standin' there, drinkin' down them big peaches
and pears as if they was all real. I know'd he'd come here ag'in, for
them fellers never gives you up; and I didn't know how to keep him
away, for I didn't want to let the dogs loose on a man what, after all,
didn't want to do no more harm than to talk the life out of you. So I
just happened to notice, as I came to the house, how kind of desolate
everything looked, and I thought perhaps I might make it look worse,
and he wouldn't care to deal here. So I thought of putting up a poster
like that, for nobody whose place was a-goin' to be sold for taxes
would be likely to want trees. So I run in the house, and wrote it
quick and put it up. And sure enough, the man he come along soon, and
when he looked at that paper an' tried the gate, an' looked over the
fence an' saw the house all shut up an' not a livin' soul about--for I
had both the dogs in the house with me--he shook his head an' walked
off, as much as to say, 'If that man had fixed his place up proper
with my trees he wouldn't a-come to this!' An' then, as I found the
poster worked so good, I thought it might keep other people from comin'
a-botherin' around, and so I left it up; but I was a-goin' to be sure
and take it down before you came."
As it was now pretty late in the afternoon, I proposed that Pomona
should postpone the rest of her narrative until evening. She said that
there was nothing else to tell that was very particular; and I did not
feel as if I could stand anything more just now, even if it was very
particular.
When we were alone, I said to Euphemia:
"If we ever have to go away from this place again----"
"But we won't go away," she interrupted, looking up to me with as
bright a face as she ever had; "at least, not for a long, long, long
time to come.
"And I'm so glad you're to be a vestry-man."