I.

In the best room of a farm-house on the skirts of a village in the hills

of Northern Massachusetts, there sat one morning in August three people

who were not strangers to the house, but who had apparently assembled

in the parlor as the place most in accord with an unaccustomed finery

in their dress. One was an elderly woman with a plain, honest face, as

kindly in expression as she could be perfectly sure she felt, and

no more; she rocked herself softly in the haircloth arm-chair, and

addressed as father the old man who sat at one end of the table between

the windows, and drubbed noiselessly upon it with his stubbed fingers,

while his lips, puckered to a whistle, emitted no sound. His face had

that distinctly fresh-shaven effect which once a week is the advantage

of shaving no oftener: here and there, in the deeper wrinkles, a frosty

stubble had escaped the razor. He wore an old-fashioned, low black

satin stock, over the top of which the linen of his unstarched collar

contrived with difficulty to make itself seen; his high-crowned,

lead-colored straw hat lay on the table before him. At the other end of

the table sat a young girl, who leaned upon it with one arm, propping

her averted face on her hand. The window was open beside her, and she

was staring out upon the door-yard, where the hens were burrowing for

coolness in the soft earth under the lilac bushes; from time to time she

put her handkerchief to her eyes.

“I don't like this part of it, father,” said the elderly

woman,--“Lyddy's seeming to feel about it the way she does right at the

last moment, as you may say.” The old man made a noise in his throat

as if he might speak; but he only unpuckered his mouth, and stayed his

fingers, while the other continued: “I don't want her to go now, no more

than ever I did. I ain't one to think that eatin' up everything on your

plate keeps it from wastin', and I never was; and I say that even if you

couldn't get the money back, it would cost no more to have her stay than

to have her go.”

“I don't suppose,” said the old man, in a high, husky treble, “but what

I could get some of it back from the captain; may be all. He didn't seem

any ways graspin'. I don't want Lyddy should feel, any more than you do,

Maria, that we're glad to have her go. But what I look at is this:

as long as she has this idea--Well, it's like this--I d'know as I can

express it, either.” He relapsed into the comfort people find in giving

up a difficult thing.

“Oh, I know!” returned the woman. “I understand it's an opportunity; you

might call it a leadin', almost, that it would be flyin' in the face

of Providence to refuse. I presume her gifts were given her for

improvement, and it would be the same as buryin' them in the ground for

her to stay up here. But I do say that I want Lyddy should feel just

_so_ about goin', or not go at all. It ain't like goin' among strangers,

though, if it _is_ in a strange land. They're her father's own kin, and

if they're any ways like him they're warm-_hearted_ enough, if that's

all you want. I guess they'll do what's right by Lyddy when she gets

there. And I try to look at it this way: that long before that maple by

the gate is red she'll be with her father's own sister; and I for one

don't mean to let it worry me.” She made search for her handkerchief,

and wiped away the tears that fell down her cheeks.

“Yes,” returned the old man; “and before the leaves are on the ground

we shall more'n have got our first letter from her. I declare for't,”

he added, after a tremulous pause, “I was goin' to say how Lyddy would

enjoy readin' it to us! I don't seem to get it rightly into my head that

she's goin' away.”

“It ain't as if Lyddy was leavin' any life behind her that's over and

above pleasant,” resumed the woman. “She's a good girl, and I never want

to see a more uncomplainin'; but I know it's duller and duller here all

the while for her, with us two old folks, and no young company; and I

d'know as it's been any better the two winters she's taught in the

Mill Village. That's what reconciles me, on Lyddy's account, as much as

anything. I ain't one to set much store on worldly ambition, and I never

was; and I d'know as I care for Lyddy's advancement, as you may call it.

I believe that as far forth as true happiness goes she'd be as well off

here as there. But I don't say but what she would be more satisfied in

the end, and as long as you can't have happiness, in this world, I say

you'd better have satisfaction. Is that Josiah Whitman's hearse goin'

past?” she asked, rising from her chair, and craning forward to bring

her eyes on a level with the window, while she suspended the agitation

of the palm-leaf fan which she had not ceased to ply during her talk;

she remained a moment with the quiescent fan pressed against her bosom,

and then she stepped out of the door, and down the walk to the gate.

“Josiah!” she called, while the old man looked and listened at the

window. “Who you be'n buryin'?”

The man halted his hearse, and answered briefly, “Mirandy Holcomb.”

“Why, I thought the funeral wa'n't to be till tomorrow! Well, I

declare,” said the woman, as she reëntered the room and sat down again

in her rocking-chair, “I didn't ask him whether it was Mr. Goodlow

or Mr. Baldwin preached the sermon. I was so put out hearin' it was

Mirandy, you might say I forgot to ask him anything. Mirandy was always

a well woman till they moved down to the Mill Village and began takin'

the hands to board,--so many of 'em. When I think of Lyddy's teachin'

there another winter,--well, I could almost rejoice that she was goin'

away. She ain't a mite too strong as it is.”

Here the woman paused, and the old man struck in with his quaint treble

while she fanned herself in silence: “I do suppose the voyage is goin'

to be everything for her health. She'll be from a month to six weeks

gettin' to Try-East, and that'll be a complete change of air, Mr.

Goodlow says. And she won't have a care on her mind the whole way out.

It'll be a season of rest and quiet. I did wish, just for the joke of

the thing, as you may say, that the ship had be'n goin' straight to

Venus, and Lyddy could 'a' walked right in on 'em at breakfast, some

morning. I should liked it to be'n a surprise. But there wa'n't any ship

at Boston loadin' for Venus, and they didn't much believe I'd find

one at New York. So I just took up with the captain of the Aroostook's

offer. He says she can telegraph to her folks at Venus as soon as she

gets to Try-East, and she's welcome to stay on the ship till they come

for her. I didn't think of their havin' our mod'n improvements out

there; but he says they have telegraphs and railroads everywheres, the

same as we do; and they're _real_ kind and polite when you get used to

'em. The captain, he's as nice a man as I ever see. His wife's be'n two

or three voyages with him in the Aroostook, and he'll know just how to

have Lyddy's comfort looked after. He showed me the state-room she's

goin' to have. Well, it ain't over and above large, but it's pretty as

a pink: all clean white paint, with a solid mahogany edge to the berth,

and a mahogany-framed lookin'-glass on one side, and little winders at

the top, and white lace curtains to the bed. He says he had it fixed

up for his wife, and he lets Lyddy have it all for her own. She can set

there and do her mendin' when she don't feel like comin' into the cabin.

The cabin--well, I wish you could see that cabin, Maria! The first mate

is a fine-appearing man, too. Some of the sailors looked pretty rough;

but I guess it was as much their clothes as anything; and I d'know as

Lyddy'd _have_ a great deal to do with them, any way.” The old man's

treble ceased, and at the same moment the shrilling of a locust in one

of the door-yard maples died away; both voices, arid, nasal, and high,

lapsed as one into a common silence.

The woman stirred impatiently in her chair, as if both voices had been

repeating something heard many times before. They seemed to renew her

discontent. “Yes, I know; I know all that, father. But it ain't the

mahogany I think of. It's the child's gettin' there safe and well.”

“Well,” said the old man, “I asked the captain about the seasickness,

and he says she ain't nigh so likely to be sick as she would on the

steamer; the motion's more regular, and she won't have the smell of the

machinery. That's what he said. And he said the seasickness would do her

good, any way. I'm sure I don't want her to be sick any more than you

do, Maria.” He added this like one who has been unjustly put upon his

defense.

They now both remained silent, the woman rocking herself and fanning,

and the old man holding his fingers suspended from their drubbing upon

the table, and looking miserably from the woman in the rocking-chair

to the girl at the window, as if a strict inquiry into the present

situation might convict him of it in spite of his innocence. The girl

still sat with her face turned from them, and still from time to time

she put her handkerchief to her eyes and wiped away the tears. The

locust in the maple began again, and shrilled inexorably. Suddenly the

girl leaped to her feet.

“There's the stage!” she cried, with a tumult in her voice and manner,

and a kind of choking sob. She showed, now that she stood upright, the

slim and elegant shape which is the divine right of American girlhood,

clothed with the stylishness that instinctive taste may evoke, even in a

hill town, from study of paper patterns, Harper's Bazar, and the costume

of summer boarders. Her dress was carried with spirit and effect.

“Lydia Blood!” cried the other woman, springing responsively to her

feet, also, and starting toward the girl, “don't you go a step without

you feel just like it! Take off your things this minute and stay, if

you wouldn't jus' as lives go. It's hard enough to _have_ you go, child,

without seemin' to force you!”

“Oh, aunt Maria,” answered the girl, piteously, “it almost kills me to

go; but _I'm_ doing it, not you. I know how you'd like to have me stay.

But don't say it again, or I couldn't bear up; and I'm going now, if I

have to be carried.”

The old man had risen with the others; he was shorter than either, and

as he looked at them he seemed half awed, half bewildered, by so much

drama. Yet it was comparatively very little. The girl did not offer to

cast herself upon her aunt's neck, and her aunt did not offer her an

embrace, it was only their hearts that clung together as they simply

shook hands and kissed each other. Lydia whirled away for her last look

at herself in the glass over the table, and her aunt tremulously began

to put to rights some slight disorder in the girl's hat.

“Father,” she said sharply, “are Lyddy's things all ready there by the

door, so's not to keep Ezra Perkins waitin'? You know he always grumbles

so. And then he _gets_ you to the cars so't you have to wait half an

hour before they start.” She continued to pin and pull at details of

Lydia's dress, to which she descended from her hat. “It sets real nice

on you, Lyddy. I guess you'll think of the time we had gettin' it made

up, when you wear it out there.” Miss Maria Latham laughed nervously.

With a harsh banging and rattling, a yellow Concord coach drew up at the

gate where Miss Maria had stopped the hearse. The driver got down, and

without a word put Lydia's boxes and bags into the boot, and left two or

three light parcels for her to take into the coach with her.

Miss Maria went down to the gate with her father and niece. “Take the

back seat, father!” she said, as the old man offered to take the middle

place. “Let them that come later have what's left. You'll be home

to-night, father; I'll set up for you. Good-by again, Lyddy.” She did

not kiss the girl again, or touch her hand. Their decent and sparing

adieux had been made in the house. As Miss Maria returned to the door,

the hens, cowering conscience-stricken under the lilacs, sprang up

at sight of her with a screech of guilty alarm, and flew out over the

fence.

“Well, I vow,” soliloquized Miss Maria, “from where she set Lyddy must

have seen them pests under the lilacs the whole time, and never said

a word.” She pushed the loosened soil into place with the side of her

ample slipper, and then went into the house, where she kindled a fire in

the kitchen stove, and made herself a cup of Japan tea: a variety of the

herb which our country people prefer, apparently because it affords the

same stimulus with none of the pleasure given by the Chinese leaf.