ESTHER GOES TO PRAYER-MEETING
Meanwhile autumn was gliding away at the old farm. It was worth Esther
Northmore’s while, as Aunt Katharine had suggested, to have seen October
in her mother’s country. Even Old Timers, used to the glory that wrapped
its hills in the shortening days, doubted gravely whether they had ever
known a fall when the woods wore such gorgeous coloring as now, or kept
their royal robes so long. All the world seemed flaming in crimson and
gold, with fringes of purple at the roadsides, and Esther, walking
joyously in the midst, felt her pulses beating to a rhythm she had never
caught before in the swinging of the round old world. Her grandfather
was no poet; but he liked to see the girl come in with her face glowing
and her hands full of leaves, which always seemed to her more beautiful
than any she had ever found before. Sometimes he was moved to remind her
that this, too, was “vanity,” one of earth’s passing shows, but she
protested against this, and told him it would never pass for her. She
should keep it as long as she had life and memory.
Very often in these shining days came Mr. Philip Hadley; once to urge
that pleasant invitation, then to make sure that his friends had
returned from the trip in safety; once to bring her a book she had
wanted, and at last to say good-by to Ruel Saxon. The Hadleys were about
to leave their summer home. With the approach of November it was time to
be back in the city. There had been an eager look in his eyes as he
added, turning to Esther, “You will be going about the same time.” And
he had kept her hand longer than usual at the door as he said, “It has
been delightful to see you in this lovely old home, but we shall see
each other much oftener in Boston, I hope. I can’t tell you how glad I
am that you are going to be there.”
[Illustration: “‘IT HAS BEEN DELIGHTFUL TO SEE YOU IN THIS LOVELY OLD
HOME.’”]
She had dropped her eyes, that easy color rising in her face as he
spoke, and then he had said, “Good-by for a little while,” with a very
earnest pressure of the hand in his, and ridden away.
It was late when he left, but she slipped out of the house immediately
for a walk, and for once there were no leaves in her hand when she came
back. “It looked like rain,” she said, when Tom remarked that she had
stopped short of her favorite woods.
It did not look so much like rain but that Ruel Saxon went as usual to
the prayer-meeting that night, and of course Esther went with him. It
was one of the standing engagements for every week. Perhaps the girl
could have spared it sometimes—there were few young people there—but she
never declined to accompany her grandfather. As for him, it was a place
he loved; a spot in which his own gifts shone conspicuous, and in which
it must be confessed he sometimes appropriated more than his fair share
of the time. Why Christian people did not all and always go to
prayer-meeting was one of the things he could not understand, and it
really seemed to him a surprising omission that there was not an
explicit command in the Bible laying the duty upon them. However, he
consoled himself with the admonition “not forsaking the assembling of
yourselves together, as the manner of some is,” to which favorite
quotation he frequently added that he should not forsake the assembling
of _himself_ together as long as he was able to be there.
There really was some doubt in Aunt Elsie’s mind to-night as to the last
point. The old gentleman seemed to have all the premonitory symptoms of
a cold, but he would have scorned to stay at home for a trifle of that
sort, and started in good time on the long ride to the village. He bore
his part in the meeting with unusual unction, and a number of the
brothers and sisters took his hand at the close to thank him
impressively for his beautiful remarks. It was a form of flattery which
he dearly loved.
Then, as he jogged home behind Dobbin with Esther, he fell to talking,
in reminiscent mood, of his own long services in the church, and this,
making all due allowance for that cheerful vanity, which he had never
been at pains to conceal, was a subject on which Ruel Saxon, if any man,
had some right to grow eloquent. Ministers might come and ministers
might go, but, as deacon of the church in Esterly, he had gone on, if
not forever, at least so long that few could remember when he had not
held and magnified the office. He had sat on councils to receive and
dismiss, he had contended for the faith, he had poured oil on troubled
waters; in short, in all the offices of peace and war, he had stood at
his post, and none could name the day when he had shirked its duties.
“I’ve seen some strange doings in my time,” he said, after one of his
pauses, “and I tell you there’s as much human nature among church
members as there is among outsiders. Sometimes I’ve thought ’twas
because they needed grace worse than most folks that the Lord elected
some of ’em. I’ve been called on to settle quarrels among professors
that would astonish you; and I’ve had a hand in their love affairs too,
once or twice, when they got things so tangled up that they couldn’t
straighten ’em out for themselves,” he added with a little chuckle.
“Love affairs!” repeated Esther, catching at the chance of a story.
“Why, how was that? Do tell me one of them, grandfather.”
He clucked to Dobbin, drew his hand across his face in the meditative
way that suggested a stroking of memory, and began slowly:—
“I guess the queerest one I ever had anything to do with, and the one
that bothered me most in my own mind, was that affair between Jotham
Radley and those two girls. You see they were both bound to have him;
and for the life of him he couldn’t seem to settle on which one it
should be.”
“_They_ were bound to have _him_?” ejaculated Esther. She had heard of
two lovers to one lady, but this sort of a case was new in her
acquaintance.
“Well, I don’t know as I or’ to say _they_ were,” said the old
gentleman, correcting himself. “It was Huldy’s mother on one side, and
’twas Polly herself on the other. You see, Jotham had been keeping
company a good while with Huldy, and folks gener’ly thought ’twas a
match between them, but he got to carrying on with Polly Green ’bout the
time he was building her father’s barn. I always thought she must have
led him on. He was a wonderful easy man to be pulled round by women
folks, and Polly was a smart girl, there’s no denying that.
“Well, it began to be common talk that they were engaged, and then
Huldy’s folks spoke out and said ’twas no such thing; it was all settled
between him and Huldy long ago, and her mother showed the linen she’d
spun and the bed quilts she’d pieced for housekeeping. It got to be a
good deal of a scandal, for Jotham was clerk of the church, and some
folks, specially the women, thought it or’ to be stopped. So we deacons
talked it over together, and then two of us went to see Jotham and asked
him how it was about it. He didn’t say much, one way or t’other—acted
sort o’ queer ’n’ shame-faced; but he agreed the talk or’ to be stopped,
and said he’d have it settled in a week.
“I guess he found it harder to settle than he counted on, for Polly was
a dreadful spirited girl, and Huldy’s mother was the kind that couldn’t
be put off. Anyhow, instead of easing up, the talk kept getting louder,
and Jotham didn’t show his face in the meeting-house for two Sundays.
Well, the deacons felt that he was trifling with ’em, and that time we
went in a body to deal with him.
“Deacon Simms did the bulk of the talking, and he told Jotham pretty
straight what he thought about a man’s whiffling round between two girls
as he did, and then he told him if he couldn’t settle the business for
himself the church would have to settle it for him. At that Jotham spoke
out like a man distracted, and said he wished to goodness we would. I
asked him if he’d abide by our decision, and he said he’d abide by
anything the girls would.
“I must say I didn’t much like the business, but we went the next day to
see the girls. Polly cried, and took on, and according to her account
Jotham had certainly said some wonderful pointed things for a man that
didn’t know his own mind. As for Huldy, she looked sick and scared, and
’twas much as we could do to get a word out of her. Her mother was ready
enough to talk, but Jotham warn’t engaged to _her_ anyhow, and I stood
to it that we couldn’t settle the thing by the way _she_ looked at it. I
always suspicioned that if Huldy’d spoke up and freed her mind, she
might have made out the best case, but she wouldn’t do it.
“Seemed as if she didn’t want to commit him, and the other deacons
thought ’twas a clear case he ought to marry Polly. It sort of ’peared
to me that it or’ to be Huldy, but of course I couldn’t prove it, and
anyway ’twas three to one. So I gave in to the rest, and to settle all
the talk, we had Jotham and Polly published in church the next Sunday.
They did say Jotham turned dreadful white when they told him how we’d
settled it, but he married Polly at the set time, and as far as I know
they always got along well together.”
“What become of Huldah?” queried Esther.
“Huldy?” said the deacon, reflecting. “Well, she stayed single till she
must have been upward of thirty; then she married a widower, and
everybody said ’twas a good match.”
There was silence for some time, then Esther said, with her eyes on the
sky, over which the clouds were shifting uneasily, “Grandfather, do you
think a person _could_ have any doubt in his own mind as to which one of
two people he cared for most, if—if he was really in love with either of
them?”
“I ain’t sure but he might,” said the deacon, slowly. “It takes a good
while to get acquainted with folks, and I don’t know but it’s about as
hard sometimes to know your own mind, as ’tis to know anybody
else’s—even if ’tis inside of you.” And then he added briskly, “But it
stan’s to reason that a man or’ to have a care how far he goes before he
gets things cleared up.”
She seemed not to hear the last remark. “But if you had known a person
for a long, long time,” she said insistently, “there couldn’t be any
doubt then, could there?”
Again, like the wise man he was, the deacon answered slowly, “Well, a
body or’ to get his mind made up in a reasonable length of time,” he
said. “There was Nathan Weyler went to see Patty Foster every Saturday
night for thirty years before he asked her to marry him. I should call
that _slow_! But there _is_ such a thing as seeing so much of
folks—being so close to ’em, you know—that you don’t really get as good
a sight at ’em as you would if they were farther off. It’s getting your
attention drawn somewhere else, and seeing what’s in other folks
sometimes, that wakes you up to what there is in those you thought you
knew best.”
Esther, whose eyes had been fixed on her grandfather’s face intently
during this reply, looked suddenly back at the sky. She had thought
there were no stars to-night, but she was aware, all at once, that there
were four or five shining straight before her. Had they all come out in
the last moment, or was it an illustration of what he had just been
saying?
Her voice shook a little, and she did not look at her grandfather as she
asked her next question. “But if it came to you that there _was_ more in
somebody than you had realized—if you saw more to admire than you ever
did before—_that_ wouldn’t be enough, would it? I mean, it wouldn’t be
right to marry for anything but love, would it?” She broke suddenly off,
then began again with a nervous, half-incoherent swiftness. “That man,
for instance, that you were telling me about, and Huldah. If he had just
felt sorry for her, and it kept coming to him all the time that he hated
to leave her, because—because he had known her so long, and he knew it
would be hard for her, and she was so good and true—all that wouldn’t be
enough to make him marry her, would it?”
Strange that she should be so deeply stirred over that old story of so
long ago! Her hands trembled so much that she had to press them together
to hold them still when she had finished.
He was a keen-witted man, Ruel Saxon. Perhaps it may have crossed his
mind at that moment that he was being called once more, at this late
hour of his life, to lend a hand in straightening out some tangled skein
of love, but if so he did not reveal it.
“No,” he said distinctly, “no; there’s nothing else but love will do.
It’s all that’s strong enough to last, and it’s a long, long thing,
giving your promise to marry.”
And then that shrewd reflective note crept into his voice again as he
added: “But if it kept coming to a body the way you speak of, to be
thinking of somebody else all the time, and be sorry for them, and all
that, I should be a little mite doubtful if there wasn’t something after
all besides pity at the bottom of it. A body wouldn’t keep on so very
long being sorry for one person, if he was right down in love with
another. He’d forget about that one before he knew it. It’s like Aaron’s
rod, you see. Some things get swallowed up terrible quick when the one
that’s bigger and more alive stretches itself out among ’em.”
She did not ask any more questions. She kept her eyes on the stars for a
long time after that. And her grandfather spoke to Dobbin presently in a
tone of impatience. “Get up; get up; it’s time we were home long ago.”
It was certainly later than usual when they drew up at the door. Aunt
Elsie opened it, looking out rather anxiously when the wheels of the
carriage stopped. “I guess we’ve been a little longer than common on the
way, we’ve had so much to talk about,” said the old gentleman,
cheerfully. Then, as he got down from the carriage, and left it in the
hands of Tom, who stood ready with the lantern, he added, stretching
himself, “I declare, I feel sort o’ chilly and stiff in the joints.
Mebbe I’d better have a little sup of something warm before I get into
bed.”
Esther had thought that would be the last time of going to
prayer-meeting with her grandfather, and so it proved, but not because
she had taken her flight before the next Wednesday evening came. Perhaps
it was a cold settling upon him with the raw gray weather which November
ushered in, but he was feverish next morning, and kept the house,
complaining of draughts which no one else felt, and a little querulous,
as he was apt to be when anything ailed that outer man in whose general
soundness he took such pride.
For three days he sat by the fire, swallowing boneset tea in quantities
and of a degree of bitterness which filled the household, especially
Esther, with admiration; but he sternly rejected Aunt Elsie’s suggestion
that he should send for a physician, being in practice disposed to the
opinion that a man had no use for a doctor until he had reached the
point where the chances were against a doctor or any one else being able
to help him. He was in something of a strait, however, when Sunday came
and he was clearly unable to attend church. To admit the gravity of his
case by sending for a medical man was one thing, but to absent himself
from the house of God, unless such state of gravity existed, was
another; and between the two horns of the dilemma he tossed painfully
all the morning. In the end Aunt Elsie settled it, and she was quite
willing that he should take what grumbling comfort he could in
representing himself as a martyr to feminine insistence when the doctor
appeared.
Evidently the latter did not think he had been called too soon. He sent
his patient promptly to bed, and now, having advertised himself as sick,
the old gentleman obeyed orders with the meekness of a lamb. It would be
only a few days, of course; but while it lasted he meant to make the
most of his case, and take his full dues in the way of sympathy and
attention.
That the minister would come promptly was certain, and there would be
opportunity for testing the fidelity of his brother deacons to the duty
of visiting the sick and afflicted. Undoubtedly there would be prayers
sent up in his behalf from the pulpit and at the Wednesday evening
prayer-meeting, and—let us not judge the good man too severely! his own
gift in prayer was of no common order—he really hoped the petitions
would be well expressed. As for his own family, it went without saying
that they would wait upon him with unfailing attention, while he lay, as
he plaintively expressed it, on his “bed of pain and languishment”; and
feminine attentions were dear to the soul of Ruel Saxon.
He did not have to suggest to Esther that she should delay her departure
for Boston. Indeed, it is possible that he forgot her plans altogether,
and she remembered them herself only to say quietly to Aunt Elsie, “I
shall stay, of course, till he is better. I couldn’t think of leaving
him now, and perhaps I can be some help to you in taking care of him.”
Aunt Elsie was not an effusive woman, but the tone in which she said,
“It’ll be a real comfort to have you here,” made the girl look happy.
She meant to slip across the fields later in the day and tell Aunt
Katharine that her going had been postponed, but her grandfather grew
restless as the day wore on, and seemed to feel neglected if some one
were not constantly at his side.
“I really think Aunt Katharine ought to know it,” she said at supper,
and Tom, who was sitting at the table, responded promptly, “I’ll go and
tell her, if you want me to.”
“Will you?” she said eagerly. “Thank you, Tom. Tell her I’ll come down
and see her myself as soon as grandfather gets a little better.”
“And don’t let her feel too much worried about him,” cautioned his
mother. “He isn’t any worse than he was last week, only he’s in bed, and
that makes him seem worse.”
“All right,” said Tom, “I’ll go as soon as I’m through milking.”
Esther thanked him again, though in her heart she would rather he had
proposed to spend an hour in his grandfather’s room. It was several days
since she had seen Aunt Katharine, and she would have liked a little
chat in the pleasant living-room, where that big wood stove had been set
up, and the windows were growing gay with old-fashioned chrysanthemums.
They were the only flowers she ever kept in her windows, and she excused
her partiality for these on a whimsical plea of pity.
“They count on being taken in,” she said one day, when Esther came upon
her in the garden potting them for the winter. “They know they can’t do
half their blossoming outdoors at this time o’ year, but that’s the way
they time it every season. Look at those buds, thick as spatter, and
they won’t half of ’em have a chance to show their color unless somebody
goes to the trouble of taking ’em in and doing for ’em. I hate to see
things go so far and then make a fizzle of it.” And she had pressed the
earth about their roots in the big stone jars with a carefulness of
touch and a look of exasperated patience which the girl had enjoyed
immensely.
The friendship which to others seemed so odd seemed to her now the most
natural thing in the world, and more and more she valued it. Once, in
the soreness of that clash with Kate, she had poured out her heart to
her mother. Perhaps Kate had done so too in the days that followed her
return; but the reply which Mrs. Northmore made had cleared the
atmosphere for Esther, at least, and left the intimacy free and
untroubled.
“My dear child,” she wrote, “I am sure you will not believe that I share
your sister’s uneasiness over your friendship with Aunt Katharine. The
questions over which she has brooded so long are real and vital, and I
am not sorry that you should come to know them through knowing one who
holds her views upon them with such deep and unselfish earnestness as
your Aunt Katharine. A braver or truer heart than hers I have never
known. But it must have occurred to you—if not, it surely will
later—that she sees only one side of some of the great facts of our
woman’s life. The reformer who sees only one side of any question is
needed, no doubt, to startle others into recognition of facts they would
otherwise miss, but in the end the reform must depend on those who see
both sides, and see them with steady fairness. If your life shall be as
happy as I hope it may be, I cannot think you will permanently hold some
of Aunt Katharine’s opinions; but meanwhile I would not have you shut
your heart to her or her word. Oh, believe me, my dear, there is no
eye-opener in the world like love.”
The old woman was drawing the shades behind the chrysanthemums in the
windows when Tom came to her house in the dusk of that evening. He had
expected to deliver his message at the door, but she insisted on his
coming in and rendering it with careful detail. Certainly he did not err
on the side against which his mother had cautioned him. Indeed, if the
old gentleman had heard his grandson’s statement of his case he would
probably have felt a strong inclination to get out of bed and go to his
sister’s at once for the express purpose of telling her that he was much
worse than the boy had represented.
Tom was not inclined to anxieties, and a certain inquisitorial attitude
which his grandfather had maintained during the past few days as to his
own work at the barn, and the amount of care which Dobbin was receiving,
had left the impression on his mind that his grandfather was not
suffering as much as he might be.
He revealed this to some extent as he answered Aunt Katharine’s
questions, and she, after putting them sharply for a few minutes,
settled back in her chair with an air of evident relief. She was not
surprised to learn that Esther had put off her going to Boston. “I
should know she’d do it,” she said, nodding, and she added, with a
peculiar smile, “I s’pose your grandfather hated dreadful bad to
disappoint her.”
Tom disclaimed any knowledge on this head, and then remarked acutely,
“He’ll keep her busy enough while she stays. He doesn’t seem to want her
out of his sight a minute.”
“Hm,” said Miss Saxon. “I’ll warrant he’d keep ’em all busy if they were
there.” And then she remarked casually, “It must seem sort of quiet at
your house compared with what ’twas this summer.”
“Kate was the liveliest one,” said Tom, and he said it with such a tone
of regret that his aunt looked at him keenly.
“You liked her, did you?” she asked.
Perhaps his secret knowledge of that interview in which she had worsted
Kate, and an impression that she had a special grudge against the girl,
inclined him to the unusual emphasis with which he answered the
question.
“I never saw a girl I liked so well in my life,” he said. “She’s made of
the right sort of stuff, and she’s game clear through.”
“Hm,” grunted Miss Saxon again, beginning to look very much interested.
“I understand you ’n’ she did a sight of quarrelling. She generally got
ahead of you, didn’t she?”
“No marm, she didn’t,” said Tom, promptly. “I generally got ahead of
her, only she’d never own it.”
Aunt Katharine laughed. If anything could please her more than to have a
girl get the best of a controversy it was to know that she had kept on
after getting the worst. She had always approved the spirit of those old
Britons, of whom Cæsar complained that they never knew when they were
beaten.
“What do you mean by saying she’s made of the right sort of stuff?” she
asked suddenly.
“Why, I mean,” said Tom, hesitating a little,—he was not analytical in
his turn of mind,—“I mean she’s plucky, and she’s out-and-out about
everything. I’d trust her as quick as I would a boy.”
“As quick as you would a boy!” repeated Aunt Katharine, bristling; “what
do you mean by that, I’d like to know.”
Tom had not come for a controversy with Aunt Katharine, and she really
looked a little dangerous at that moment. But he remembered suddenly
that word of Kate’s, that the old woman’s manner didn’t “faze” her,
after the first, and he determined, as far as in him lay, not to be
fazed either.
“Why, I didn’t mean anything bad,” he said, drawing a little nearer the
edge of his chair, “but there’s a difference, you know. At least you
would know if you were a boy. Most girls are sort of sly when they want
to get anything out of you, and they do things they wouldn’t think were
fair for you to do. But she wasn’t that way. She always let you know
what she was up to, and when it came to fighting she struck right out
from the shoulder. But I wasn’t blaming the rest of ’em. I guess it’s
all right, being girls,” he added, rising and beginning to move toward
the door.
Aunt Katharine rose too, and brought her cane down on the floor with a
sharp thud. “That’s it!” she said, fiercely. “Boys ’n’ men, you’re all
alike, and you’ve got the notion already. You act as if we women folks
were weaker creatures than you are. You make us think we are; and then
you look for all the tricks that weaker creatures use when they defend
themselves. It serves you right if we _do_ use ’em. But it’s a lie all
the same, for both of us.”
She drew her lips hard, then, as she saw his hand on the knob of the
door, she said, “Tell your grandfather I’ll be up to see him to-morrow.”
She did not keep the promise. The rain, which had been threatening for
days, falling now and then in drizzling showers, then stopping again, as
if, though still in sullen mood, some vacillating purpose held it,
settled down at last for steady work. There was a week of leaden days,
with the rain beating out all that was left of the color in the woods,
and changing the world into one brown monotony which melancholy seemed
to have marked for her own.
And through it all, at the old house, Ruel Saxon kept his bed, and as
the days went on grew no better. There was not much pain: a little
fever, a growing drowsiness, a failing appetite, a little swelling of
the limbs. Even the doctor seemed not to know what it was that had crept
so suddenly upon the active frame, but he looked graver with every
visit. Once, as he added another vial to the little row on the stand by
the bed, he mentioned a name which the sick man, opening his eyes a
little wider, repeated, adding, “That was what ailed my grandfather;”
and then he closed his eyes without sign of uneasiness. Perhaps he
remembered how much stronger in all its seeming powers was this body of
his than that worn-out form from which the spirit of the grandfather
stole away at last.
But a change came over him in these days. He lost the querulous tone of
inquiry about things at the barn. He seemed to have forgotten that
suspicion of his that Tom was liable to let Dobbin’s manger go empty.
Once he said to the boy instead, “It’s a little hard on you and Mike to
have it all to do, Tom. I wish I could help you with the husking.”
At last there came a day when the rain ceased to fall. The sun shone out
clear and bright, and the clouds went stately across the sky, to the
measure of marches they had kept in October. Mists rose from the earth,
not heavily, but with a lightness suggestive of warmth still in the
breast of the earth, and Esther, standing on the doorstep of the old
house, noted that there was even yet a little greenness among the limp
stalks in the garden where a flock of birds were twittering over the
seeds they had found for their breakfast. “I’m so glad the rain has
gone,” she said, drawing a long breath. “It’s pleasant weather that
grandfather needs.”
And then she went softly into his room to tell him how the sun was
shining, and smiled as he murmured in reply, “Truly the light is sweet,
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.”
It was that day in the afternoon that Aunt Katharine came across the
fields. The door of the kitchen was on the latch, and she lifted it and
stepped in without knocking. Perhaps she expected to see him sitting by
the fire, for she looked before her eagerly, but even Aunt Elsie was not
in sight, and she passed on without greeting to her brother’s room. He
looked quite bright as he lay with his face toward Esther, who had just
been giving him a cup of broth.
“Why, Aunt Katharine!” exclaimed the girl, rising to her feet, and the
old man, lifting his head, put out his hand with an eager welcome.
“So you hain’t managed to get out of bed yet?” she said, taking the
chair from which Esther had risen, and looking down at her brother with
an affectionate smile. “Well, I’m sorry for you, Ruel.” Then, a half
whimsical expression creeping over her smile, she added: “’Pears to me
you don’t hold up so much better’n some of us that don’t claim to be so
stout. I’ve owned up to it for a good while that I ain’t as young as I
used to be, and there’s no denying that I make a pretty fair showing
with most old women when it comes to aches and pains, but they hain’t
brought me onto the flat of my back for the last ten years.”
“I’ve been favored above most, Katharine,” said the old man, mildly.
“I’ve had my strength and faculties spared to me beyond the common, and
I can’t complain of anything now. ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of
God and shall we not receive evil?’ It is the Lord’s will, let him do
what seemeth him good.”
She was evidently struck with his reply, and for a moment looked at him
keenly. “I should have come up before this, if it hadn’t rained all the
time,” she said, “and I took it for granted you was getting along. But I
guess you hain’t needed me any, with those that are here to wait on
you.”
The old man’s eyes turned to Esther with a peculiar tenderness. “No, I
don’t want for anything,” he said. “Elsie manages everything just right,
and Esther here seems to know what I need before I get a chance to speak
of it. It’s queer now how she puts me in mind of her mother,” he went on
musingly. “Sometimes I can’t get it out of my mind that it’s Lucia
sitting right here by me. And I hain’t been out of my head either, have
I?”
The girl did not answer the question, but she stooped and kissed his
forehead. “It’s nice to have you think I’m mother,” she said. “Do it all
you please.”
He smiled at her, then turned with a sudden wistfulness to his sister.
“Katharine,” he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you, and how much
harder ’twould be for you than ’tis for me, if you should be taken sick
down there all by yourself. There wouldn’t be anybody to take care of
you as the folks take care of me. I wish you lived up here with us. I’ve
wanted it this good while; and Elsie’d be willing, you know she would.”
“She wouldn’t like it, Ruel, and you wouldn’t either, after a little
while,” said the old woman, her swift honesty throwing a note that was a
trifle harsh into her voice. “You and I never did see things the same
way, and we should see ’em more contrariwise than ever, if we had to
stand on just the same piece o’ ground to look at ’em.”
The old man lifted his head with an obvious effort, and his breath came
quick for a moment. “No,” he said, “we never did look at things just
alike, you ’n’ I, and I guess ’twas natural to us both to want to pull
the other round to our way. But I’ve been thinking about that too,
Katharine, and I’m—I’m afraid I’ve riled you up sometimes when I hadn’t
or’ to. You’ve got just as good a right to your way of looking at things
as I have to mine, and I’m afraid I’ve said things to you sometimes that
warn’t becoming.”
What she might have replied to this, if a neighbor, with Aunt Elsie, had
not entered the room at that moment, is not certain. A pallor had swept
suddenly across her face, and her eyes, wide and startled, were fixed
with a frightened look upon her brother. She rose from her chair as the
others drew near, and without responding to their greeting stepped
swiftly outside the door. Then she beckoned to her niece with a
trembling gesture.
“Elsie,” she whispered, when the other had crossed the threshold, “I’ll
be obliged to you if you’ll let Tom hitch up and drive me down to the
house. I want to get a few things and come right back. If you don’t mind
I’ll stay here a while. Ruel’s a dreadful sick man.”