When the clouds hung low, or chimneys refused to draw, or the bread
soured over night, a pessimistic public, turning for relief to the
local drama, said that Amelia Titcomb had married a tramp. But as soon
as the heavens smiled again, it was conceded that she must have been
getting lonely in her middle age, and that she had taken the way of
wisdom so to furbish up mansions for the coming years. Whatever was set
down on either side of the page, Amelia did not care. She was
whole-heartedly content with her husband and their farm.
It had happened, one autumn day, that she was trying, all alone, to
clean out the cistern. This was while she was still Amelia Titcomb,
innocent that there lived a man in the world who could set his foot
upon her maiden state, and flourish there. She was an impatient
creature. She never could delay for a fostering time to put her plants
into the ground, and her fall cleaning was done long before the flies
were gone. So, to-day, while other house mistresses sat cosily by the
fire, awaiting a milder season, she was toiling up and down the ladder
set in the cistern, dipping pails of sediment from the bottom, and,
hardy as she was, almost repenting her of a too-fierce desire. Her
thick brown hair was roughened and blown about her face, her cheeks
bloomed out in a frosty pink, and the plaid kerchief, tied in a hard
knot under her chin, seemed foolishly ineffectual against the cold. Her
hands ached, holding the pail, and she rebelled inwardly against the
inclemency of the time. It never occurred to her that she could have
put off this exacting job. She would sooner have expected Heaven to put
off the weather. Just as she reached the top of the cistern, and lifted
her pail of refuse over the edge, a man appeared from the other side of
the house, and stood confronting her. He was tall and gaunt, and his
deeply graven face was framed by grizzled hair. Amelia had a rapid
thought that he was not so old as he looked; experience, rather than
years, must have wrought its trace upon him. He was leading a little
girl, dressed with a very patent regard for warmth, and none for
beauty. Amelia, with a quick, feminine glance, noted that the child's
bungled skirt and hideous waist had been made from an old army
overcoat. The little maid's brown eyes were sweet and seeking; they
seemed to petition for something. Amelia's heart did not respond; at
that time, she had no reason for thinking she was fond of children. Yet
she felt a curious disturbance at sight of the pair. She afterwards
explained it adequately to the man, by asserting that they looked as
odd as Dick's hatband.
"Want any farmwork done?" asked he. "Enough to pay for a night's
lodgin'?" His voice sounded strangely soft from one so large and
rugged. It hinted at unused possibilities. But though Amelia felt
impressed, she was conscious of little more than her own cold and
stiffness, and she answered sharply,--
"No, I don't. I don't calculate to hire, except in hayin' time, an'
then I don't take tramps."
The man dropped the child's hand, and pushed her gently to one side.
"Stan' there, Rosie," said he. Then he went forward, and drew the pail
from Amelia's unwilling grasp. "Where do you empt' it?" he asked.
"There? It ought to be carried further. You don't want to let it gully
down into that beet bed. Here, I'll see to it."
Perhaps this was the very first time in Amelia's life that a man had
offered her an unpaid service for chivalry alone. And somehow, though
she might have scoffed, knowing what the tramp had to gain, she
believed in him and in his kindliness. The little girl stood by, as if
she were long used to doing as she had been told, with no expectation
of difficult reasons; and the man, as soberly, went about his task. He
emptied the cistern, and cleansed it, with plentiful washings. Then, as
if guessing by instinct what he should find, he went into the kitchen,
where were two tubs full of the water which Amelia had pumped up at the
start. It had to be carried back again to the cistern; and when the job
was quite finished, he opened the bulkhead, set the tubs in the cellar,
and then, covering the cistern and cellar-case, rubbed his cold hands
on his trousers, and turned to the child.
"Come, Rosie," said he, "we'll be goin'."
It was a very effective finale, but still Amelia suspected no trickery.
The situation seemed to her, just as the two new actors did, entirely
simple, like the course of nature. Only, the day was a little warmer
because they had appeared. She had a new sensation of welcome company.
So it was that, quite to her own surprise, she answered as quickly as
he spoke, and her reply also seemed an inevitable part of the drama:--
"Walk right in. It's 'most dinner-time, an' I'll put on the pot." The
two stepped in before her, and they did not go away.
Amelia herself never quite knew how it happened; but, like all the
other natural things of life, this had no need to be explained. At
first, there were excellent reasons for delay. The man, whose name
proved to be Enoch Willis, was a marvelous hand at a blow, and she kept
him a week, splitting some pine knots that defied her and the boy who
ordinarily chopped her wood. At the end of the week, Amelia confessed
that she was "terrible tired seein' Rosie round in that gormin' kind of
a dress;" so she cut and fitted her a neat little gown from her own red
cashmere. That was the second reason. Then the neighbors heard of the
mysterious guest, and dropped in, to place and label him. At first,
following the lead of undiscouraged fancy, they declared that he must
be some of cousin Silas's connections from Omaha; but even before
Amelia had time to deny that, his ignorance of local tradition denied
it for him. He must have heard of this or that, by way of cousin Silas;
but he owned to nothing defining place or time, save that he had been
in the war--"all through it." He seemed to be a man quite weary of the
past and indifferent to the future. After a half hour's talk with him,
unseasonable callers were likely to withdraw, perhaps into the pantry,
whither Amelia had retreated to escape catechism, and remark jovially,
"Well, 'Melia, you ain't told us who your company is!"
"Mr. Willis," said Amelia. She was emulating his habit of reserve. It
made a part of her new loyalty.
Even to her, Enoch had told no tales; and strangely enough, she was
quite satisfied. She trusted him. He did say that Rosie's mother was
dead; for the last five years, he said, she had been out of her mind.
At that, Amelia's heart gave a fierce, amazing leap. It struck a note
she never knew, and wakened her to life and longing. She was glad
Rosie's mother had not made him too content. He went on a step or two
into the story of his life. His wife's last illness had eaten up the
little place, and after she went, he got no work. So, he tramped. He
must go again. Amelia's voice sounded sharp and thin, even to her, as
she answered,--
"Go! I dunno what you want to do that for. Rosie's terrible contented
here."
His brown eyes turned upon her in a kindly glance.
"I've got to make a start somewhere," said he. "I've been thinkin' a
machine shop's the best thing. I shall have to depend on somethin'
better 'n days' works."
Amelia flushed the painful red of emotion without beauty.
"I dunno what we're all comin' to," said she brokenly.
Then the tramp knew. He put his gnarled hand over one of hers. Rosie
looked up curiously from the speckled beans she was counting into a
bag, and then went on singing to herself an unformed, baby song.
"Folks'll talk," said Enoch gently. "They do now. A man an' woman ain't
never too old to be hauled up, an' made to answer for livin'. If I was
younger, an' had suthin' to depend on, you'd see; but I'm no good now.
The better part o' my life's gone."
Amelia flashed at him a pathetic look, half agony over her own lost
pride, and all a longing of maternal love.
"I don't want you should be younger," said she. And next week they were
married.
Comment ran races with itself, and brought up nowhere. The treasuries
of local speech were all too poor to clothe so wild a venture. It was
agreed that there's no fool like an old fool, and that folks who ride
to market may come home afoot. Everybody forgot that Amelia had had no
previous romance, and dismally pictured her as going through the woods,
and getting a crooked stick at last. Even the milder among her judges
were not content with prophesying the betrayal of her trust alone. They
argued from the tramp nature to inevitable results, and declared it
would be a mercy if she were not murdered in her bed. According to the
popular mind, a tramp is a distinct species, with latent tendencies
toward crime. It was recalled that a white woman had, in the old days,
married a comely Indian, whose first drink of fire-water, after six
months of blameless happiness, had sent him raging home, to kill her
"in her tracks." Could a tramp, pledged to the traditions of an awful
brotherhood, do less? No, even in honor, no! Amelia never knew how the
tide of public apprehension surged about her, nor how her next-door
neighbor looked anxiously out, the first thing on rising, to exclaim,
with a sigh of relief, and possibly a dramatic pang, "There! her
smoke's a-goin'."
Meantime, the tramp fell into all the usages of life indoors; and
without, he worked revolution. He took his natural place at the head of
affairs, and Amelia stood by, rejoicing. Her besetting error of doing
things at the wrong moment had disarranged great combinations as well
as small. Her impetuosity was constantly misleading her, bidding her
try, this one time, whether harvest might not follow faster on the
steps of spring. Enoch's mind was of another cast. For him, tradition
reigned, and law was ever laying out the way. Some months after their
marriage, Amelia had urged him to take away the winter banking about
the house, for no reason save that the Mardens clung to theirs; but he
only replied that he'd known of cold snaps way on into May, and he
guessed there was no particular hurry. The very next day brought a
bitter air, laden with sleet, and Amelia, shivering at the open door,
exulted in her feminine soul at finding him triumphant on his own
ground. Enoch seemed, as usual, unconscious of victory. His immobility
had no personal flavor. He merely acted from an inevitable devotion to
the laws of life; and however often they might prove him right, he
never seemed to reason that Amelia was consequently wrong. Perhaps that
was what made it so pleasant to live with him.
It was "easy sleddin'" now. Amelia grew very young. Her cheeks gained a
bloom, her eyes brightened. She even, as the matrons noticed, took to
crimping her hair. They looked on with a pitying awe. It seemed a
fearsome thing, to do so much for a tramp who would only kill you in
the end. Amelia stepped deftly about the house. She was a large woman,
whose ways had been devoid of grace; but now the richness of her
spiritual condition informed her with a charm. She crooned a little
about her work. Singing voice she had none, but she grew into a way of
putting words together, sometimes a line from the psalms, sometimes a
name she loved, and chanting the sounds, in unrecorded melody.
Meanwhile, little Rosie, always irreproachably dressed, with a jealous
care lest she fall below the popular standard, roamed in and out of the
house, and lightened its dull intervals. She, like the others, grew at
once very happy, because, like them, she accepted her place without a
qualm, as if it had been hers from the beginning. They were simple
natures, and when their joy came, they knew how to meet it.
But if Enoch was content to follow the beaten ways of life, there was
one window through which he looked into the upper heaven of all:
thereby he saw what it is to create. He was a born mechanician. A
revolving wheel would set him to dreaming, and still him to that
lethargy of mind which is an involuntary sharing in the things that
are. He could lose himself in the life of rhythmic motion; and when he
discovered rusted springs, or cogs unprepared to fulfill their purpose,
he fell upon them with the ardor of a worshiper, and tried to set them
right. Amelia thought he should have invented something, and he
confessed that he had invented many things, but somehow failed in
getting them on the market. That process he mentioned with the
indifference of a man to whom a practical outcome is vague, and who
finds in the ideal a bright reality. Even Amelia could see that to be a
maker was his joy; to reap rewards of making was another and a lower
task.
One cold day in the early spring, he went "up garret" to hunt out an
old saddle, gathering mildew there, and came upon a greater treasure, a
disabled clock. He stepped heavily down, bearing it aloft in both
hands.
"See here, 'Melia," asked he, "why don't this go?"
Amelia was scouring tins on the kitchen table. There was a teasing wind
outside, with a flurry of snow, and she had acknowledged that the
irritating weather made her as nervous as a witch. So she had taken to
a job to quiet herself.
"That clock?" she replied. "That was gran'ther Eli's. It give up
strikin', an' then the hands stuck, an' I lost all patience with it. So
I bought this nickel one, an' carted t'other off into the attic. 'T
ain't worth fixin'."
"Worth it!" repeated Enoch. "Well, I guess I'll give it a chance."
He drew a chair to the stove, and there hesitated. "Say, 'Melia," said
he, "should you jest as soon I'd bring in that old shoemaker's bench
out o' the shed? It's low, an' I could reach my tools off'n the floor."
Amelia lacked the discipline of contact with her kind, but she was
nevertheless smooth as silk in her new wifehood.
"Law, yes, bring it along," said she. "It's a good day to clutter up.
The' won't be nobody in."
So, while Enoch laid apart the clock with a delicacy of touch known
only to square, mechanical fingers, and Rosie played with the
button-box on the floor, assorting colors and matching white with
white, Amelia scoured the tins. Her energy kept pace with the wind; it
whirled in gusts and snatches, yet her precision never failed.
"Made up your mind which cow to sell?" she asked, opening a discussion
still unsettled, after days of animated talk.
"Ain't much to choose," said Enoch. He had frankly set Amelia right on
the subject of livestock; and she smilingly acquiesced in his larger
knowledge. "Elbridge True's got a mighty nice Alderney, an' if he's
goin' to sell milk another year, he'll be glad to get two good milkers
like these. What he wants is ten quarts apiece, no matter if it's bluer
'n a whetstone. I guess I can swap off with him; but I don't want to
run arter him. I put the case last Thursday. Mebbe he'll drop round."
"Well," concluded Amelia, "I guess you're pretty sure to do what's
right."
The forenoon galloped fast, and it was half past eleven before she
thought of dinner.
"Why," said she, "ain't it butcher day? I've been lottin' on a piece o'
liver."
"Butcher day is Thursday," said Enoch. "You've lost count."
"My land!" responded Amelia. "Well, I guess we can put up with some
fried pork an' apples." There came a long, insistent knock at the outer
door. "Good heavens! Who's there! Rosie, you run to the side-light, an'
peek. It can't be a neighbor. They'd come right in. I hope my soul it
ain't company, a day like this."
Rosie got on her fat legs with difficulty. She held her pinafore full
of buttons, but disaster lies in doing too many things at once; there
came a slip, a despairing clutch, and the buttons fell over the floor.
There were a great, many round ones, and they rolled very fast. Amelia
washed the sand from her parboiled fingers, and drew a nervous breath.
She had a presentiment of coming ill, painfully heightened by her
consciousness that the kitchen was "riding out," and that she and her
family rode with it. Rosie came running back from her peephole, husky
with importance. The errant buttons did not trouble her. She had an
eternity of time wherein to pick them up; and, indeed, the chances were
that some tall, benevolent being would do it for her.
"It's a man," she said. "He's got on a light coat with bright buttons,
and a fuzzy hat. He's got a big nose."
Now, indeed, despair entered into Amelia, and sat enthroned. She sank
down on a straight-backed chair, and put her hands on her knees, while
the knock came again, a little querulously.
"Enoch," said she, "do you know what's happened? That's cousin Josiah
Pease out there." Her voice bore the tragedy of a thousand past
encounters; but that Enoch could not know.
"Is it?" asked he, with but a mild appearance of interest. "Want me to
go to the door?"
"Go to the door!" echoed Amelia, so stridently that he looked up at her
again. "No; I don't want anybody should go to the door till this room's
cleared up. If 't w'an't so ever-lastin' cold, I'd take him right into
the clock-room, an' blaze a fire; but he'd see right through that. You
gether up them tools an' things, an' I'll help carry out the bench."
If Enoch had not just then been absorbed in a delicate combination of
brass, he might have spoken more sympathetically. As it was, he seemed
kindly, but remote.
"Look out!" said he, "you'll joggle. No, I guess I won't move. If he's
any kind of a man, he'll know what 'tis to clean a clock."
Amelia was not a crying woman, but the hot tears stood in her eyes. She
was experiencing, for the first time, that helpless pang born from the
wounding of pride in what we love.
"Don't you see, Enoch?" she insisted. "This room looks like the Old
Boy--an' so do you--an' he'll go home an' tell all the folks at the
Ridge. Why, he's heard we're married, an' come over here to spy out the
land. He hates the cold. He never stirs till 'way on into June; an' now
he's come to find out."
"Find out what?" inquired Enoch absorbedly. "Well, if you're anyways
put to 't, you send him to me." That manly utterance enunciated from a
"best-room" sofa, by an Enoch clad in his Sunday suit, would have
filled Amelia with rapture; she could have leaned on it as on the
Tables of the Law. But, alas! the scene-setting was meagre, and though
Enoch was very clean, he had no good clothes. He had pointedly refused
to buy them with his wife's money until he should have worked on the
farm to a corresponding amount. She had loved him for it; but every day
his outer poverty hurt her pride. "I guess you better ask him in,"
concluded Enoch. "Don't you let him bother you."
Amelia turned about with the grand air of a woman repulsed.
"He _don't_ bother me," said she, "an' I _will_ let him in." She walked
to the door, stepping on buttons as she went, and conscious, when she
broke them, of a bitter pleasure. It added to her martyrdom.
She flung open the door, and called herself a fool in the doing; for
the little old man outside was in the act of turning away. In another
instant, she might have escaped. But he was only too eager to come back
again, and it seemed to Amelia as if he would run over her, in his
desire to get in.
"There! there! 'Melia," said he, pushing past her, "can't stop to talk
till I git near the fire. Guess you were settin' in the kitchen, wa'n't
ye? Don't make no stranger o' me. That your man?"
She had shut the door, and entered, exasperated anew by the rising
wind. "That's my husband," said she coldly. "Enoch, here's cousin
Josiah Pease."
Enoch looked up benevolently over his spectacles, and put out a horny
left hand, the while the other guarded his heap of treasures. "Pleased
to meet you, sir," said he. "You see I'm tinkerin' a clock."
To Enoch, the explanation was enough. All the simple conventions of his
life might well wait upon a reason potent as this. Josiah Pease went to
the stove, and stood holding his tremulous hands over a cover. He was a
little man, eclipsed in a butternut coat of many capes, and his
parchment face shaded gradually up from it, as if into a harder medium.
His eyes were light, and they had an exceedingly uncomfortable way of
darting from one thing to another, like some insect born to spear and
sting. His head was entirely bald, all save a thin fringe of hair not
worth mentioning, since it disappeared so effectually beneath his
collar; and his general antiquity was grotesquely emphasized by two
sets of aggressive teeth, displaying their falsity from every crown.
Amelia took out the broom, and began sweeping up buttons. She had an
acrid consciousness that by sacrificing them she was somehow completing
the tragedy of her day. Rosie gave a little cry; but Amelia pointed to
the corner where stood the child's chair, exhumed from the attic, after
forty years of rest. "You set there," she said, in an undertone, "an'
keep still."
Rosie obeyed without a word. Such an atmosphere had not enveloped her
since she entered this wonderful house. Remembering vaguely the days
when her own mother had "spells," and she and her father effaced
themselves until times should change, she folded her little hands, and
lapsed back into a condition of mental servitude.
Meanwhile, Amelia followed nervously in the track of Enoch's talk with
cousin Josiah, though her mind kept its undercurrent of foolish musing.
Like all of us, snatched up by the wheels of great emergencies, she
caught at trifles while they whirled her round. Here were
"soldier-buttons." All the other girls had collected them, though she,
having no lover in the war, had traded for her few. Here were the
gold-stones that held her changeable silk, there the little clouded
pearls from her sister's raglan. Annie had died in youth; its glamour
still enwrapped her. Poor Annie! But Rosie had seemed to bring her
back. Amelia swept litter, buttons and all, into the dustpan, and
marched to the stove to throw her booty in. Nobody marked her save
Rosie, whose playthings were endangered; but Enoch's very obtuseness to
the situation was what stayed her hand. She carried the dustpan away
into a closet, and came back, to gather up her tins. A cold rage of
nervousness beset her, so overpowering that she herself was amazed at
it.
Meantime, Josiah Pease had divested himself of his coat, and drawn the
grandfather chair into a space behind the stove.
"You a clock-mender by trade?" he asked of Enoch.
"No," said Enoch absently, "I ain't got any reg'lar trade."
"Jest goin' round the country?" amended cousin Josiah, with the
preliminary insinuation Amelia knew so well. He was, it had been said,
in the habit of inventing lies, and challenging other folks to stick to
'em. But Enoch made no reply. He went soberly on with his work.
"Law, 'Melia, to think o' your bein' married," continued Josiah,
turning to her. "I never should ha' thought that o' you."
"I never thought it of myself," said Amelia tartly. "You don't know
what you'll do till you're tried."
"No! no!" said Josiah Pease. "Never in the world. You remember Sally
Flint, how plain-spoken she is? Well, Betsy Harden's darter Ann rode
down to the poor-house t'other day with some sweet trade, an' took a
young sprig with her. He turned his back a minute, to look out o'
winder, an' Sally spoke right up, as ye might say, afore him. 'That
your beau?' says she. Well, o' course Ann couldn't own it, an' him
right there, so to speak. So she shook her head. 'Well, I'm glad on
't,' says Sally. 'If I couldn't have anything to eat, I'd have suthin'
to look at!' He was the most unsignifyin'est creatur' you ever put your
eyes on. But they say Ann's started in on her clo'es."
Amelia's face had grown scarlet. "I dunno's any such speech is called
for here," said she, in a furious self-betrayal. Josiah Pease had
always been able to storm her reserves.
"Law, no," answered he comfortably. "It come into my mind,--that's
all."
She looked at Enoch with a passionate sympathy, knowing too well how
the hidden sting was intended to work. But Enoch had not heard. He was
absorbed in a finer problem of brass and iron; and though Amelia had
wished to save him from hurt, in that instant she scorned him for his
blindness. "I guess I shall have to ask you to move," she said to her
husband coldly. "I've got to git to that stove, if we're goin' to have
any dinner to-day."
It seemed to her that even Enoch might take the hint, and clear away
his rubbish. Her feelings might have been assuaged by a clean hearth
and some acquiescence in her own mood. But he only moved back a little,
and went on fitting and musing. He was not thinking of her in the
least, nor even of Josiah Pease. His mind had entered its brighter,
more alluring world. She began to fry her pork and apples, with a
perfunctory attempt at conversation. "You don't often git round so
early in the spring," said she.
"No," returned cousin Josiah. "I kind o' got started out, this time, I
don't rightly know why. I guess I've had you in mind more of late, for
some Tiverton folks come over our way, tradin', an' they brought all
the news. It sort o' stirred me up to come."
Amelia turned her apples vigorously, well aware that the slices were
breaking. That made a part of her bitter day.
"Folks needn't take the trouble to carry news about me," she said.
There was an angry gleam in her eyes. "If anybody wants to know
anything, let 'em come right here, an' I'll settle 'em." The ring of
her voice penetrated even to Enoch's perception, and he looked up in
mild surprise. She seemed to have thrown open, for an instant, a little
window into a part of her nature he had never seen.
"How good them apples smell!" said Josiah innocently. "Last time I had
'em was down to cousin Amasa True's, he that married his third wife,
an' she run through all he had. I went down to see 'em arter the
vandoo,--you know they got red o' most everything,--an' they had fried
pork an' apples for dinner. Old Bashaby dropped in. 'Law!' says she.
'Fried pork an' apples! Well, I call that livin' pretty nigh the
wind!'" Josiah chuckled. He was very warm now, and the savory smell of
the dish he decried was mounting to what served him for fancy. "'Melia,
you ain't never had your teeth out, have ye?" he asked, as one who
spoke from richer memories.
"I guess my teeth'll last me as long as I want 'em," said Amelia
curtly.
"Well, I didn't know. They looked real white an' firm last time I see
'em, but you never can tell how they be underneath. I knew the folks
would ask me when I got home. I thought I'd speak."
"Dinner's ready," said Amelia. She turned an alien look upon her
husband. "You want to wash your hands?"
Enoch rose cheerfully. He had got to a hopeful place with the clock.
"Set ri' down," said he. "Don't wait a minute. I'll be along."
So Amelia and the guest began their meal, while little Rosie climbed,
rather soberly, into her higher chair, and held out her plate.
"You wait," said Amelia harshly. "Can't you let other folks eat a
mouthful before you have to have yours?" Yet as she said it, she
remembered, with a remorseful pang, that she had always helped the
child first; it had been so sweet to see her pleased and satisfied.
Josiah was never talkative during meals. Not being absolute master of
his teeth, his mind dwelt with them. Amelia remembered that, with a
malicious satisfaction. But he could not be altogether dumb. That,
people said, would never happen to Josiah Pease while he was above
ground.
"That his girl?" he asked, indicating Rosie with his knife, in a
gustatory pause.
"Whose?" inquired Amelia willfully.
"His." He pointed again, this time to the back room, where Enoch was
still washing his hands.
"Yes."
"Mother dead?"
Amelia sprang from her chair, while Rosie looked at her with the
frightened glance of a child to whom some half-forgotten grief has
suddenly returned.
"Josiah Pease!" said Amelia. "I never thought a poor, insignificant
creatur' like you could rile me so,--when I know what you're doin' it
for, too. But you've brought it about. Her mother dead? Ain't I been
an' married her father?"
"Law, Amelia, do se' down!" said Josiah indulgently. There was a
mince-pie warming on the back of the stove. He saw it there. "I didn't
mean nuthin'. I'll be bound you thought she's dead, or you wouldn't ha'
took such a step. I only meant, did ye see her death in the paper, for
example, or anything like that?"
"'Melia," called Enoch, from the doorway, "I won't come in to dinner
jest now. Elbridge True's drove into the yard. I guess he's got it in
mind to talk it over about them cows. I don't want to lose the chance."
"All right," answered Amelia. She took her seat again, while Enoch's
footsteps went briskly out through the shed. With the clanging of the
door, she felt secure. If she had to deal with Josiah Pease, she could
do it better alone, clutching at the certainty that was with her from
of old, that, if you could only keep your temper with cousin Josiah,
you had one chance of victory. Flame out at him, and you were lost.
"Some more potatoes?" asked she, with a deceptive calm.
"Don't care if I do," returned Josiah, selecting greedily, his fork
hovering in air. "Little mite watery, ain't they? Dig 'em yourself?"
"We dug 'em," said Amelia coldly.
Rosie stepped down from her chair, unnoticed. To Amelia, she was then
no bigger than some little winged thing flitting about the room in time
of tragedy. Our greatest emotions sometimes stay unnamed. At that
moment, Amelia was swayed by as tumultuous a love as ever animated
damsel of verse or story; but it merely seemed to her that she was an
ill-used woman, married to a man for whom she was called on to be
ashamed. Rosie tiptoed into the entry, put on her little shawl and
hood, and stole out to play in the corn-house. When domestic squalls
were gathering, she knew where to go. The great outdoors was safer. Her
past had taught her that.
"Don't like to eat with folks, does he? Well, it's all in what you're
brought up to."