Title: The Queen's Twin and Other Stories
Author: Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849-1909
Language: English
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THE QUEEN'S TWIN

AND OTHER STORIES


BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT



BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge


M DCCC XCIX



COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



To

SUSAN BURLEY CABOT



CONTENTS


  THE QUEEN'S TWIN
  A DUNNET SHEPHERDESS
  WHERE'S NORA
  BOLD WORDS AT THE BRIDGE
  MARTHA'S LADY
  THE COON DOG
  AUNT CYNTHY DALLETT
  THE NIGHT BEFORE THANKSGIVING



THE QUEEN'S TWIN.

I.

The coast of Maine was in former years brought so near to foreign
shores by its busy fleet of ships that among the older men and women
one still finds a surprising proportion of travelers.  Each
seaward-stretching headland with its high-set houses, each island of a
single farm, has sent its spies to view many a Land of Eshcol; one may
see plain, contented old faces at the windows, whose eyes have looked
at far-away ports and known the splendors of the Eastern world.  They
shame the easy voyager of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean;
they have rounded the Cape of Good Hope and braved the angry seas of
Cape Horn in small wooden ships; they have brought up their hardy boys
and girls on narrow decks; they were among the last of the Northmen's
children to go adventuring to unknown shores.  More than this one
cannot give to a young State for its enlightenment; the sea captains
and the captains' wives of Maine knew something of the wide world, and
never mistook their native parishes for the whole instead of a part
thereof; they knew not only Thomaston and Castine and Portland, but
London and Bristol and Bordeaux, and the strange-mannered harbors of
the China Sea.

One September day, when I was nearly at the end of a summer spent in a
village called Dunnet Landing, on the Maine coast, my friend Mrs. Todd,
in whose house I lived, came home from a long, solitary stroll in the
wild pastures, with an eager look as if she were just starting on a
hopeful quest instead of returning.  She brought a little basket with
blackberries enough for supper, and held it towards me so that I could
see that there were also some late and surprising raspberries sprinkled
on top, but she made no comment upon her wayfaring.  I could tell
plainly that she had something very important to say.

"You have n't brought home a leaf of anything," I ventured to this
practiced herb-gatherer.  "You were saying yesterday that the witch
hazel might be in bloom."

"I dare say, dear," she answered in a lofty manner; "I ain't goin' to
say it was n't; I ain't much concerned either way 'bout the facts o'
witch hazel.  Truth is, I 've been off visitin'; there's an old Indian
footpath leadin' over towards the Back Shore through the great heron
swamp that anybody can't travel over all summer.  You have to seize
your time some day just now, while the low ground 's summer-dried as it
is to-day, and before the fall rains set in.  I never thought of it
till I was out o' sight o' home, and I says to myself, 'To-day 's the
day, certain!' and stepped along smart as I could.  Yes, I 've been
visitin'.  I did get into one spot that was wet underfoot before I
noticed; you wait till I get me a pair o' dry woolen stockings, in case
of cold, and I 'll come an' tell ye."

Mrs. Todd disappeared.  I could see that something had deeply
interested her.  She might have fallen in with either the sea-serpent
or the lost tribes of Israel, such was her air of mystery and
satisfaction.  She had been away since just before mid-morning, and as
I sat waiting by my window I saw the last red glow of autumn sunshine
flare along the gray rocks of the shore and leave them cold again, and
touch the far sails of some coast-wise schooners so that they stood
like golden houses on the sea.

I was left to wonder longer than I liked.  Mrs. Todd was making an
evening fire and putting things in train for supper; presently she
returned, still looking warm and cheerful after her long walk.

"There 's a beautiful view from a hill over where I 've been," she told
me; "yes, there 's a beautiful prospect of land and sea.  You would n't
discern the hill from any distance, but 't is the pretty situation of
it that counts.  I sat there a long spell, and I did wish for you.  No,
I did n't know a word about goin' when I set out this morning" (as if I
had openly reproached her!); "I only felt one o' them travelin' fits
comin' on, an' I ketched up my little basket; I didn't know but I might
turn and come back time for dinner.  I thought it wise to set out your
luncheon for you in case I did n't.  Hope you had all you wanted; yes,
I hope you had enough."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said I.  My landlady was always peculiarly bountiful
in her supplies when she left me to fare for myself, as if she made a
sort of peace-offering or affectionate apology.

"You know that hill with the old house right on top, over beyond the
heron swamp?  You 'll excuse me for explainin'," Mrs. Todd began, "but
you ain't so apt to strike inland as you be to go right along shore.
You know that hill; there 's a path leadin' right over to it that you
have to look sharp to find nowadays; it belonged to the up-country
Indians when they had to make a carry to the landing here to get to the
out' islands.  I 've heard the old folks say that there used to be a
place across a ledge where they 'd worn a deep track with their
moccasin feet, but I never could find it.  'T is so overgrown in some
places that you keep losin' the path in the bushes and findin' it as
you can; but it runs pretty straight considerin' the lay o' the land,
and I keep my eye on the sun and the moss that grows one side o' the
tree trunks.  Some brook's been choked up and the swamp's bigger than
it used to be.  Yes; I did get in deep enough, one place!"

I showed the solicitude that I felt.  Mrs. Todd was no longer young,
and in spite of her strong, great frame and spirited behavior, I knew
that certain ills were apt to seize upon her, and would end some day by
leaving her lame and ailing.

"Don't you go to worryin' about me," she insisted, "settin' still's the
only way the Evil One 'll ever get the upper hand o' me.  Keep me
movin' enough, an' I 'm twenty year old summer an' winter both.  I
don't know why 't is, but I 've never happened to mention the one I 've
been to see.  I don't know why I never happened to speak the name of
Abby Martin, for I often give her a thought, but 't is a dreadful
out-o'-the-way place where she lives, and I haven't seen her myself for
three or four years.  She's a real good interesting woman, and we 're
well acquainted; she 's nigher mother's age than mine, but she 's very
young feeling.  She made me a nice cup o' tea, and I don't know but I
should have stopped all night if I could have got word to you not to
worry."

Then there was a serious silence before Mrs. Todd spoke again to make a
formal announcement.

"She is the Queen's Twin," and Mrs. Todd looked steadily to see how I
might bear the great surprise.

"The Queen's Twin?" I repeated.

"Yes, she 's come to feel a real interest in the Queen, and anybody can
see how natural 't is.  They were born the very same day, and you would
be astonished to see what a number o' other things have corresponded.
She was speaking o' some o' the facts to me to-day, an' you 'd think
she 'd never done nothing but read history.  I see how earnest she was
about it as I never did before.  I 've often and often heard her allude
to the facts, but now she's got to be old and the hurry's over with her
work, she 's come to live a good deal in her thoughts, as folks often
do, and I tell you 't is a sight o' company for her.  If you want to
hear about Queen Victoria, why Mis' Abby Martin 'll tell you
everything.  And the prospect from that hill I spoke of is as beautiful
as anything in this world; 't is worth while your goin' over to see her
just for that."

"When can you go again?" I demanded eagerly.

"I should say to-morrow," answered Mrs. Todd; "yes, I should say
to-morrow; but I expect 't would be better to take one day to rest, in
between.  I considered that question as I was comin' home, but I
hurried so that there wa'n't much time to think.  It's a dreadful long
way to go with a horse; you have to go 'most as far as the old Bowden
place an' turn off to the left, a master long, rough road, and then you
have to turn right round as soon as you get there if you mean to get
home before nine o'clock at night.  But to strike across country from
here, there 's plenty o' time in the shortest day, and you can have a
good hour or two's visit beside; 't ain't but a very few miles, and
it's pretty all the way along.  There used to be a few good families
over there, but they 've died and scattered, so now she 's far from
neighbors.  There, she really cried, she was so glad to see anybody
comin'.  You 'll be amused to hear her talk about the Queen, but I
thought twice or three times as I set there 't was about all the
company she 'd got."

"Could we go day after to-morrow?" I asked eagerly.

"'T would suit me exactly," said Mrs. Todd.



II.

One can never be so certain of good New England weather as in the days
when a long easterly storm has blown away the warm late-summer mists,
and cooled the air so that however bright the sunshine is by day, the
nights come nearer and nearer to frostiness.  There was a cold
freshness in the morning air when Mrs. Todd and I locked the house-door
behind us; we took the key of the fields into our own hands that day,
and put out across country as one puts out to sea.  When we reached the
top of the ridge behind the town it seemed as if we had anxiously
passed the harbor bar and were comfortably in open sea at last.

"There, now!" proclaimed Mrs. Todd, taking a long breath, "now I do
feel safe.  It's just the weather that's liable to bring somebody to
spend the day; I 've had a feeling of Mis' Elder Caplin from North
Point bein' close upon me ever since I waked up this mornin', an' I
didn't want to be hampered with our present plans.  She's a great hand
to visit; she 'll be spendin' the day somewhere from now till
Thanksgivin', but there 's plenty o' places at the Landin' where she
goes, an' if I ain't there she 'll just select another.  I thought
mother might be in, too, 'tis so pleasant; but I run up the road to
look off this mornin' before you was awake, and there was no sign o'
the boat.  If they had n't started by that time they wouldn't start,
just as the tide is now; besides, I see a lot o' mackerel-men headin'
Green Island way, and they 'll detain William.  No, we 're safe now,
an' if mother should be comin' in tomorrow we 'll have all this to tell
her.  She an' Mis' Abby Martin's very old friends."

We were walking down the long pasture slopes towards the dark woods and
thickets of the low ground.  They stretched away northward like an
unbroken wilderness; the early mists still dulled much of the color and
made the uplands beyond look like a very far-off country.

"It ain't so far as it looks from here," said my companion
reassuringly, "but we 've got no time to spare either," and she hurried
on, leading the way with a fine sort of spirit in her step; and
presently we struck into the old Indian footpath, which could be
plainly seen across the long-unploughed turf of the pastures, and
followed it among the thick, low-growing spruces.  There the ground was
smooth and brown under foot, and the thin-stemmed trees held a dark and
shadowy roof overhead.  We walked a long way without speaking;
sometimes we had to push aside the branches, and sometimes we walked in
a broad aisle where the trees were larger.  It was a solitary wood,
birdless and beastless; there was not even a rabbit to be seen, or a
crow high in air to break the silence.

"I don't believe the Queen ever saw such a lonesome trail as this,"
said Mrs. Todd, as if she followed the thoughts that were in my mind.
Our visit to Mrs. Abby Martin seemed in some strange way to concern the
high affairs of royalty.  I had just been thinking of English
landscapes, and of the solemn hills of Scotland with their lonely
cottages and stone-walled sheepfolds, and the wandering flocks on high
cloudy pastures.  I had often been struck by the quick interest and
familiar allusion to certain members of the royal house which one found
in distant neighborhoods of New England; whether some old instincts of
personal loyalty have survived all changes of time and national
vicissitudes, or whether it is only that the Queen's own character and
disposition have won friends for her so far away, it is impossible to
tell.  But to hear of a twin sister was the most surprising proof of
intimacy of all, and I must confess that there was something remarkably
exciting to the imagination in my morning walk.  To think of being
presented at Court in the usual way was for the moment quite
commonplace.



III.

Mrs. Todd was swinging her basket to and fro like a schoolgirl as she
walked, and at this moment it slipped from her hand and rolled lightly
along the ground as if there were nothing in it.  I picked it up and
gave it to her, whereupon she lifted the cover and looked in with
anxiety.

"'T is only a few little things, but I don't want to lose 'em," she
explained humbly.  "'T was lucky you took the other basket if I was
goin' to roll it round.  Mis' Abby Martin complained o' lacking some
pretty pink silk to finish one o' her little frames, an' I thought I 'd
carry her some, and I had a bunch o' gold thread that had been in a box
o' mine this twenty year.  I never was one to do much fancy work, but
we 're all liable to be swept away by fashion.  And then there's a
small packet o' very choice herbs that I gave a good deal of attention
to; they 'll smarten her up and give her the best of appetites, come
spring.  She was tellin' me that spring weather is very wiltin' an'
tryin' to her, and she was beginnin' to dread it already.  Mother 's
just the same way; if I could prevail on mother to take some o' these
remedies in good season 'twould make a world o' difference, but she
gets all down hill before I have a chance to hear of it, and then
William comes in to tell me, sighin' and bewailin', how feeble mother
is.  'Why can't you remember 'bout them good herbs that I never let her
be without?' I say to him--he does provoke me so; and then off he goes,
sulky enough, down to his boat.  Next thing I know, she comes in to go
to meetin', wantin' to speak to everybody and feelin' like a girl.
Mis' Martin's case is very much the same; but she 's nobody to watch
her.  William's kind o' slow-moulded; but there, any William's better
than none when you get to be Mis' Martin's age."

"Hadn't she any children?" I asked.

"Quite a number," replied Mrs. Todd grandly, "but some are gone and the
rest are married and settled.  She never was a great hand to go about
visitin'.  I don't know but Mis' Martin might be called a little
peculiar.  Even her own folks has to make company of her; she never
slips in and lives right along with the rest as if 'twas at home, even
in her own children's houses.  I heard one o' her sons' wives say once
she 'd much rather have the Queen to spend the day if she could choose
between the two, but I never thought Abby was so difficult as that.  I
used to love to have her come; she may have been sort o' ceremonious,
but very pleasant and sprightly if you had sense enough to treat her
her own way.  I always think she 'd know just how to live with great
folks, and feel easier 'long of them an' their ways.  Her son's wife 's
a great driver with farm-work, boards a great tableful o' men in hayin'
time, an' feels right in her element.  I don't say but she 's a good
woman an' smart, but sort o' rough.  Anybody that's gentle-mannered an'
precise like Mis' Martin would be a sort o' restraint.

"There's all sorts o' folks in the country, same 's there is in the
city," concluded Mrs. Todd gravely, and I as gravely agreed.  The thick
woods were behind us now, and the sun was shining clear overhead, the
morning mists were gone, and a faint blue haze softened the distance;
as we climbed the hill where we were to see the view, it seemed like a
summer day.  There was an old house on the height, facing southward,--a
mere forsaken shell of an old house, with empty windows that looked
like blind eyes.  The frost-bitten grass grew close about it like brown
fur, and there was a single crooked bough of lilac holding its green
leaves close by the door.

"We 'll just have a good piece of bread-an'-butter now," said the
commander of the expedition, "and then we 'll hang up the basket on
some peg inside the house out o' the way o' the sheep, and have a
han'some entertainment as we 're comin' back.  She 'll be all through
her little dinner when we get there, Mis' Martin will; but she 'll want
to make us some tea, an' we must have our visit an' be startin' back
pretty soon after two.  I don't want to cross all that low ground again
after it's begun to grow chilly.  An' it looks to me as if the clouds
might begin to gather late in the afternoon."

Before us lay a splendid world of sea and shore.  The autumn colors
already brightened the landscape; and here and there at the edge of a
dark tract of pointed firs stood a row of bright swamp-maples like
scarlet flowers.  The blue sea and the great tide inlets were
untroubled by the lightest winds.

"Poor land, this is!" sighed Mrs. Todd as we sat down to rest on the
worn doorstep.  "I 've known three good hard-workin' families that come
here full o' hope an' pride and tried to make something o' this farm,
but it beat 'em all.  There 's one small field that's excellent for
potatoes if you let half of it rest every year; but the land 's always
hungry.  Now, you see them little peaked-topped spruces an' fir balsams
comin' up over the hill all green an' hearty; they 've got it all their
own way!  Seems sometimes as if wild Natur' got jealous over a certain
spot, and wanted to do just as she 'd a mind to.  You 'll see here; she
'll do her own ploughin' an' harrowin' with frost an' wet, an' plant
just what she wants and wait for her own crops.  Man can't do nothin'
with it, try as he may.  I tell you those little trees means business!"

I looked down the slope, and felt as if we ourselves were likely to be
surrounded and overcome if we lingered too long.  There was a vigor of
growth, a persistence and savagery about the sturdy little trees that
put weak human nature at complete defiance.  One felt a sudden pity for
the men and women who had been worsted after a long fight in that
lonely place; one felt a sudden fear of the unconquerable, immediate
forces of Nature, as in the irresistible moment of a thunderstorm.

"I can recollect the time when folks were shy o' these woods we just
come through," said Mrs. Todd seriously.  "The men-folks themselves
never 'd venture into 'em alone; if their cattle got strayed they 'd
collect whoever they could get, and start off all together.  They said
a person was liable to get bewildered in there alone, and in old times
folks had been lost.  I expect there was considerable fear left over
from the old Indian times, and the poor days o' witchcraft; anyway, I
've seen bold men act kind o' timid.  Some women o' the Asa Bowden
family went out one afternoon berryin' when I was a girl, and got lost
and was out all night; they found 'em middle o' the mornin' next day,
not half a mile from home, scared most to death, an' sayin' they'd
heard wolves and other beasts sufficient for a caravan.  Poor
creatur's! they 'd strayed at last into a kind of low place amongst
some alders, an' one of 'em was so overset she never got over it, an'
went off in a sort o' slow decline.  'T was like them victims that
drowns in a foot o' water; but their minds did suffer dreadful.  Some
folks is born afraid of the woods and all wild places, but I must say
they 've always been like home to me."

I glanced at the resolute, confident face of my companion.  Life was
very strong in her, as if some force of Nature were personified in this
simple-hearted woman and gave her cousinship to the ancient deities.
She might have walked the primeval fields of Sicily; her strong gingham
skirts might at that very moment bend the slender stalks of asphodel
and be fragrant with trodden thyme, instead of the brown wind-brushed
grass of New England and frost-bitten goldenrod.  She was a great soul,
was Mrs. Todd, and I her humble follower, as we went our way to visit
the Queen's Twin, leaving the bright view of the sea behind us, and
descending to a lower country-side through the dry pastures and fields.

The farms all wore a look of gathering age, though the settlement was,
after all, so young.  The fences were already fragile, and it seemed as
if the first impulse of agriculture had soon spent itself without hope
of renewal.  The better houses were always those that had some hold
upon the riches of the sea; a house that could not harbor a
fishing-boat in some neighboring inlet was far from being sure of
every-day comforts.  The land alone was not enough to live upon in that
stony region; it belonged by right to the forest, and to the forest it
fast returned.  From the top of the hill where we had been sitting we
had seen prosperity in the dim distance, where the land was good and
the sun shone upon fat barns, and where warm-looking houses with three
or four chimneys apiece stood high on their solid ridge above the bay.

As we drew nearer to Mrs. Martin's it was sad to see what poor bushy
fields, what thin and empty dwelling-places had been left by those who
had chosen this disappointing part of the northern country for their
home.  We crossed the last field and came into a narrow rain-washed
road, and Mrs. Todd looked eager and expectant and said that we were
almost at our journey's end.  "I do hope Mis' Martin 'll ask you into
her best room where she keeps all the Queen's pictures.  Yes, I think
likely she will ask you; but 't ain't everybody she deems worthy to
visit 'em, I can tell you!" said Mrs. Todd warningly.  "She 's been
collectin' 'em an' cuttin' 'em out o' newspapers an' magazines time out
o' mind, and if she heard of anybody sailin' for an English port she 'd
contrive to get a little money to 'em and ask to have the last likeness
there was.  She 's most covered her best-room wall now; she keeps that
room shut up sacred as a meetin'-house!  'I won't say but I have my
favorites amongst 'em,' she told me t' other day, 'but they 're all
beautiful to me as they can be!'  And she's made some kind o' pretty
little frames for 'em all--you know there's always a new fashion o'
frames comin' round; first 't was shell-work, and then 't was
pine-cones, and bead-work's had its day, and now she 's much concerned
with perforated cardboard worked with silk.  I tell you that best
room's a sight to see!  But you must n't look for anything elegant,"
continued Mrs. Todd, after a moment's reflection.  "Mis' Martin's
always been in very poor, strugglin' circumstances.  She had ambition
for her children, though they took right after their father an' had
little for themselves; she wa'n't over an' above well married, however
kind she may see fit to speak.  She's been patient an' hard-workin' all
her life, and always high above makin' mean complaints of other folks.
I expect all this business about the Queen has buoyed her over many a
shoal place in life.  Yes, you might say that Abby 'd been a slave, but
there ain't any slave but has some freedom."



IV.

Presently I saw a low gray house standing on a grassy bank close to the
road.  The door was at the side, facing us, and a tangle of snowberry
bushes and cinnamon roses grew to the level of the window-sills.  On
the doorstep stood a bent-shouldered, little old woman; there was an
air of welcome and of unmistakable dignity about her.

"She sees us coming," exclaimed Mrs. Todd in an excited whisper.
"There, I told her I might be over this way again if the weather held
good, and if I came I 'd bring you.  She said right off she 'd take
great pleasure in havin' a visit from you; I was surprised, she's
usually so retirin'."

Even this reassurance did not quell a faint apprehension on our part;
there was something distinctly formal in the occasion, and one felt
that consciousness of inadequacy which is never easy for the humblest
pride to bear.  On the way I had torn my dress in an unexpected
encounter with a little thornbush, and I could now imagine how it felt
to be going to Court and forgetting one's feathers or her Court train.

The Queen's Twin was oblivious of such trifles; she stood waiting with
a calm look until we came near enough to take her kind hand.  She was a
beautiful old woman, with clear eyes and a lovely quietness and
genuineness of manner; there was not a trace of anything pretentious
about her, or high-flown, as Mrs. Todd would say comprehensively.
Beauty in age is rare enough in women who have spent their lives in the
hard work of a farmhouse; but autumn-like and withered as this woman
may have looked, her features had kept, or rather gained, a great
refinement.  She led us into her old kitchen and gave us seats, and
took one of the little straight-backed chairs herself and sat a short
distance away, as if she were giving audience to an ambassador.  It
seemed as if we should all be standing; you could not help feeling that
the habits of her life were more ceremonious, but that for the moment
she assumed the simplicities of the occasion.

Mrs. Todd was always Mrs. Todd, too great and self-possessed a soul for
any occasion to ruffle.  I admired her calmness, and presently the slow
current of neighborhood talk carried one easily along; we spoke of the
weather and the small adventures of the way, and then, as if I were
after all not a stranger, our hostess turned almost affectionately to
speak to me.

"The weather will be growing dark in London now.  I expect that you 've
been in London, dear?" she said.

"Oh, yes," I answered.  "Only last year."

"It is a great many years since I was there, along in the forties,"
said Mrs. Martin.  "'T was the only voyage I ever made; most of my
neighbors have been great travelers.  My brother was master of a
vessel, and his wife usually sailed with him; but that year she had a
young child more frail than the others, and she dreaded the care of it
at sea.  It happened that my brother got a chance for my husband to go
as supercargo, being a good accountant, and came one day to urge him to
take it; he was very ill-disposed to the sea, but he had met with
losses, and I saw my own opportunity and persuaded them both to let me
go too.  In those days they did n't object to a woman's being aboard to
wash and mend, the voyages were sometimes very long.  And that was the
way I come to see the Queen."

Mrs. Martin was looking straight in my eyes to see if I showed any
genuine interest in the most interesting person in the world.

"Oh, I am very glad you saw the Queen," I hastened to say.  "Mrs. Todd
has told me that you and she were born the very same day."

"We were indeed, dear!" said Mrs. Martin, and she leaned back
comfortably and smiled as she had not smiled before.  Mrs. Todd gave a
satisfied nod and glance, as if to say that things were going on as
well as possible in this anxious moment.

"Yes," said Mrs. Martin again, drawing her chair a little nearer, "'t
was a very remarkable thing; we were born the same day, and at exactly
the same hour, after you allowed for all the difference in time.  My
father figured it out sea-fashion.  Her Royal Majesty and I opened our
eyes upon this world together; say what you may, 't is a bond between
us."

Mrs. Todd assented with an air of triumph, and untied her hat-strings
and threw them back over her shoulders with a gallant air.

"And I married a man by the name of Albert, just the same as she did,
and all by chance, for I did n't get the news that she had an Albert
too till a fortnight afterward; news was slower coming then than it is
now.  My first baby was a girl, and I called her Victoria after my
mate; but the next one was a boy, and my husband wanted the right to
name him, and took his own name and his brother Edward's, and pretty
soon I saw in the paper that the little Prince o' Wales had been
christened just the same.  After that I made excuse to wait till I knew
what she 'd named her children.  I did n't want to break the chain, so
I had an Alfred, and my darling Alice that I lost long before she lost
hers, and there I stopped.  If I 'd only had a dear daughter to stay at
home with me, same's her youngest one, I should have been so thankful!
But if only one of us could have a little Beatrice, I 'm glad 't was
the Queen; we 've both seen trouble, but she 's had the most care."

I asked Mrs. Martin if she lived alone all the year, and was told that
she did except for a visit now and then from one of her grandchildren,
"the only one that really likes to come an' stay quiet 'long o'
grandma.  She always says quick as she's through her schoolin' she's
goin' to live with me all the time, but she 's very pretty an' has
taking ways," said Mrs. Martin, looking both proud and wistful, "so I
can tell nothing at all about it!  Yes, I 've been alone most o' the
time since my Albert was taken away, and that's a great many years; he
had a long time o' failing and sickness first."  (Mrs. Todd's foot gave
an impatient scuff on the floor.)  "An' I 've always lived right here.
I ain't like the Queen's Majesty, for this is the only palace I 've
got," said the dear old thing, smiling again.  "I 'm glad of it too, I
don't like changing about, an' our stations in life are set very
different.  I don't require what the Queen does, but sometimes I 've
thought 't was left to me to do the plain things she don't have time
for.  I expect she's a beautiful housekeeper, nobody could n't have
done better in her high place, and she's been as good a mother as she
's been a queen."

"I guess she has, Abby," agreed Mrs. Todd instantly.  "How was it you
happened to get such a good look at her?  I meant to ask you again when
I was here t' other day."

"Our ship was layin' in the Thames, right there above Wapping.  We was
dischargin' cargo, and under orders to clear as quick as we could for
Bordeaux to take on an excellent freight o' French goods," explained
Mrs. Martin eagerly.  "I heard that the Queen was goin' to a great
review of her army, and would drive out o' her Buckin'ham Palace about
ten o'clock in the mornin', and I run aft to Albert, my husband, and
brother Horace where they was standin' together by the hatchway, and
told 'em they must one of 'em take me.  They laughed, I was in such a
hurry, and said they could n't go; and I found they meant it and got
sort of impatient when I began to talk, and I was 'most broken-hearted;
't was all the reason I had for makin' that hard voyage.  Albert could
n't help often reproachin' me, for he did so resent the sea, an' I 'd
known how 't would be before we sailed; but I 'd minded nothing all the
way till then, and I just crep' back to my cabin an' begun to cry.
They was disappointed about their ship's cook, an' I 'd cooked for
fo'c's'le an' cabin myself all the way over; 't was dreadful hard work,
specially in rough weather; we 'd had head winds an' a six weeks'
voyage.  They 'd acted sort of ashamed o' me when I pled so to go
ashore, an' that hurt my feelin's most of all.  But Albert come below
pretty soon; I 'd never given way so in my life, an' he begun to act
frightened, and treated me gentle just as he did when we was goin' to
be married, an' when I got over sobbin' he went on deck and saw Horace
an' talked it over what they could do; they really had their duty to
the vessel, and could n't be spared that day.  Horace was real good
when he understood everything, and he come an' told me I 'd more than
worked my passage an' was goin' to do just as I liked now we was in
port.  He 'd engaged a cook, too, that was comin' aboard that mornin',
and he was goin' to send the ship's carpenter with me--a nice fellow
from up Thomaston way; he 'd gone to put on his ashore clothes as
quick's he could.  So then I got ready, and we started off in the small
boat and rowed up river.  I was afraid we were too late, but the tide
was setting up very strong, and we landed an' left the boat to a
keeper, and I run all the way up those great streets and across a park.
'Twas a great day, with sights o' folks everywhere, but 't was just as
if they was nothin' but wax images to me.  I kep' askin' my way an'
runnin' on, with the carpenter comin' after as best he could, and just
as I worked to the front o' the crowd by the palace, the gates was
flung open and out she came; all prancin' horses and shinin' gold, and
in a beautiful carriage there she sat; 't was a moment o' heaven to me.
I saw her plain, and she looked right at me so pleasant and happy, just
as if she knew there was somethin' different between us from other
folks."

There was a moment when the Queen's Twin could not go on and neither of
her listeners could ask a question.

"Prince Albert was sitting right beside her in the carriage," she
continued.  "Oh, he was a beautiful man!  Yes, dear, I saw 'em both
together just as I see you now, and then she was gone out o' sight in
another minute, and the common crowd was all spread over the place
pushin' an' cheerin'.  'T was some kind o' holiday, an' the carpenter
and I got separated, an' then I found him again after I did n't think I
should, an' he was all for makin' a day of it, and goin' to show me all
the sights; he 'd been in London before, but I did n't want nothin'
else, an' we went back through the streets down to the waterside an'
took the boat.  I remember I mended an old coat o' my Albert's as good
as I could, sittin' on the quarter-deck in the sun all that afternoon,
and 't was all as if I was livin' in a lovely dream.  I don't know how
to explain it, but there hasn't been no friend I've felt so near to me
ever since."

One could not say much--only listen.  Mrs. Todd put in a discerning
question now and then, and Mrs. Martin's eyes shone brighter and
brighter as she talked.  What a lovely gift of imagination and true
affection was in this fond old heart!  I looked about the plain New
England kitchen, with its wood-smoked walls and homely braided rugs on
the worn floor, and all its simple furnishings.  The loud-ticking clock
seemed to encourage us to speak; at the other side of the room was an
early newspaper portrait of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and
Ireland.  On a shelf below were some flowers in a little glass dish, as
if they were put before a shrine.

"If I could have had more to read, I should have known 'most everything
about her," said Mrs. Martin wistfully.  "I 've made the most of what I
did have, and thought it over and over till it came clear.  I sometimes
seem to have her all my own, as if we 'd lived right together.  I 've
often walked out into the woods alone and told her what my troubles
was, and it always seemed as if she told me 't was all right, an' we
must have patience.  I 've got her beautiful book about the Highlands;
't was dear Mis' Todd here that found out about her printing it and got
a copy for me, and it's been a treasure to my heart, just as if 't was
written right to me.  I always read it Sundays now, for my Sunday
treat.  Before that I used to have to imagine a good deal, but when I
come to read her book, I knew what I expected was all true.  We do
think alike about so many things," said the Queen's Twin with
affectionate certainty.  "You see, there is something between us, being
born just at the some time; 't is what they call a birthright.  She 's
had great tasks put upon her, being the Queen, an' mine has been the
humble lot; but she's done the best she could, nobody can say to the
contrary, and there 's something between us; she's been the great
lesson I 've had to live by.  She's been everything to me.  An' when
she had her Jubilee, oh, how my heart was with her!"

"There, 't would n't play the part in her life it has in mine," said
Mrs. Martin generously, in answer to something one of her listeners had
said.  "Sometimes I think, now she's older, she might like to know
about us.  When I think how few old friends anybody has left at our
age, I suppose it may be just the same with her as it is with me;
perhaps she would like to know how we came into life together.  But I
've had a great advantage in seeing her, an' I can always fancy her
goin' on, while she don't know nothin' yet about me, except she may
feel my love stayin' her heart sometimes an' not know just where it
comes from.  An' I dream about our being together out in some pretty
fields, young as ever we was, and holdin' hands as we walk along.  I 'd
like to know if she ever has that dream too.  I used to have days when
I made believe she did know, an' was comin' to see me," confessed the
speaker shyly, with a little flush on her cheeks; "and I 'd plan what I
could have nice for supper, and I was n't goin' to let anybody know she
was here havin' a good rest, except I 'd wish you, Almira Todd, or dear
Mis' Blackett would happen in, for you 'd know just how to talk with
her.  You see, she likes to be up in Scotland, right out in the wild
country, better than she does anywhere else."

"I 'd really love to take her out to see mother at Green Island," said
Mrs. Todd with a sudden impulse.

"Oh, yes!  I should love to have you," exclaimed Mrs. Martin, and then
she began to speak in a lower tone.  "One day I got thinkin' so about
my dear Queen," she said, "an' livin' so in my thoughts, that I went to
work an' got all ready for her, just as if she was really comin'.  I
never told this to a livin' soul before, but I feel you 'll understand.
I put my best fine sheets and blankets I spun an' wove myself on the
bed, and I picked some pretty flowers and put 'em all round the house,
an' I worked as hard an' happy as I could all day, and had as nice a
supper ready as I could get, sort of telling myself a story all the
time.  She was comin' an' I was goin' to see her again, an' I kep' it
up until nightfall; an' when I see the dark an' it come to me I was all
alone, the dream left me, an' I sat down on the doorstep an' felt all
foolish an' tired.  An', if you 'll believe it, I heard steps comin',
an' an old cousin o' mine come wanderin' along, one I was apt to be shy
of.  She was n't all there, as folks used to say, but harmless enough
and a kind of poor old talking body.  And I went right to meet her when
I first heard her call, 'stead o' hidin' as I sometimes did, an' she
come in dreadful willin', an' we sat down to supper together; 't was a
supper I should have had no heart to eat alone."

"I don't believe she ever had such a splendid time in her life as she
did then.  I heard her tell all about it afterwards," exclaimed Mrs.
Todd compassionately.  "There, now I hear all this it seems just as if
the Queen might have known and could n't come herself, so she sent that
poor old creatur' that was always in need!"

Mrs. Martin looked timidly at Mrs. Todd and then at me.  "'T was
childish o' me to go an' get supper," she confessed.

"I guess you wa'n't the first one to do that," said Mrs. Todd.  "No, I
guess you wa'n't the first one who 's got supper that way, Abby," and
then for a moment she could say no more.

Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Martin had moved their chairs a little so that they
faced each other, and I, at one side, could see them both.

"No, you never told me o' that before, Abby," said Mrs. Todd gently.
"Don't it show that for folks that have any fancy in 'em, such
beautiful dreams is the real part o' life?  But to most folks the
common things that happens outside 'em is all in all."

Mrs. Martin did not appear to understand at first, strange to say, when
the secret of her heart was put into words; then a glow of pleasure and
comprehension shone upon her face.  "Why, I believe you 're right,
Almira!" she said, and turned to me.

"Wouldn't you like to look at my pictures of the Queen?" she asked, and
we rose and went into the best room.



V.

The mid-day visit seemed very short; September hours are brief to match
the shortening days.  The great subject was dismissed for a while after
our visit to the Queen's pictures, and my companions spoke much of
lesser persons until we drank the cup of tea which Mrs. Todd had
foreseen.  I happily remembered that the Queen herself is said to like
a proper cup of tea, and this at once seemed to make her Majesty kindly
join so remote and reverent a company.  Mrs. Martin's thin cheeks took
on a pretty color like a girl's.  "Somehow I always have thought of her
when I made it extra good," she said.  "I 've got a real china cup that
belonged to my grandmother, and I believe I shall call it hers now."

"Why don't you?" responded Mrs. Todd warmly, with a delightful smile.

Later they spoke of a promised visit which was to be made in the Indian
summer to the Landing and Green Island, but I observed that Mrs. Todd
presented the little parcel of dried herbs, with full directions, for a
cure-all in the spring, as if there were no real chance of their
meeting again first.  As we looked back from the turn of the road the
Queen's Twin was still standing on the doorstep watching us away, and
Mrs. Todd stopped, and stood still for a moment before she waved her
hand again.

"There's one thing certain, dear," she said to me with great
discernment; "it ain't as if we left her all alone!"

Then we set out upon our long way home over the hill, where we lingered
in the afternoon sunshine, and through the dark woods across the
heron-swamp.



A DUNNET SHEPHERDESS.

I.

Early one morning at Dunnet Landing, as if it were still night, I
waked, suddenly startled by a spirited conversation beneath my window.
It was not one of Mrs. Todd's morning soliloquies; she was not
addressing her plants and flowers in words of either praise or blame.
Her voice was declamatory though perfectly good-humored, while the
second voice, a man's, was of lower pitch and somewhat deprecating.

The sun was just above the sea, and struck straight across my room
through a crack in the blind.  It was a strange hour for the arrival of
a guest, and still too soon for the general run of business, even in
that tiny eastern haven where daybreak fisheries and early tides must
often rule the day.

The man's voice suddenly declared itself to my sleepy ears.  It was Mr.
William Blackett's.

"Why, sister Almiry," he protested gently, "I don't need none o' your
nostrums!"

"Pick me a small han'ful," she commanded.  "No, no, a _small_ han'ful,
I said,--o' them large pennyr'yal sprigs!  I go to all the trouble an'
cossetin' of 'em just so as to have you ready to meet such occasions,
an' last year, you may remember, you never stopped here at all the day
you went up country.  An' the frost come at last an' blacked it.  I
never saw any herb that so objected to gardin ground; might as well try
to flourish mayflowers in a common front yard.  There, you can come in
now, an' set and eat what breakfast you 've got patience for.  I 've
found everything I want, an' I 'll mash 'em up an' be all ready to put
'em on."

I heard such a pleading note of appeal as the speakers went round the
corner of the house, and my curiosity was so demanding, that I dressed
in haste, and joined my friends a little later, with two unnoticed
excuses of the beauty of the morning, and the early mail boat.
William's breakfast had been slighted; he had taken his cup of tea and
merely pushed back the rest on the kitchen table.  He was now sitting
in a helpless condition by the side window, with one of his sister's
purple calico aprons pinned close about his neck.  Poor William was
meekly submitting to being smeared, as to his countenance, with a most
pungent and unattractive lotion of pennyroyal and other green herbs
which had been hastily pounded and mixed with cream in the little white
stone mortar.

I had to cast two or three straightforward looks at William to reassure
myself that he really looked happy and expectant in spite of his
melancholy circumstances, and was not being overtaken by retribution.
The brother and sister seemed to be on delightful terms with each other
for once, and there was something of cheerful anticipation in their
morning talk.  I was reminded of Medea's anointing Jason before the
great episode of the iron bulls, but to-day William really could not be
going up country to see a railroad for the first time.  I knew this to
be one of his great schemes, but he was not fitted to appear in public,
or to front an observing world of strangers.  As I appeared he essayed
to rise, but Mrs. Todd pushed him back into the chair.

"Set where you be till it dries on," she insisted.  "Land sakes, you'd
think he'd get over bein' a boy some time or 'nother, gettin' along in
years as he is.  An' you 'd think he 'd seen full enough o' fish, but
once a year he has to break loose like this, an' travel off way up back
o' the Bowden place--far out o' my beat, 'tis--an' go a trout fishin'!"

Her tone of amused scorn was so full of challenge that William changed
color even under the green streaks.

"I want some change," he said, looking at me and not at her.  "'T is
the prettiest little shady brook you ever saw."

"If he ever fetched home more 'n a couple o' minnies, 't would seem
worth while," Mrs. Todd concluded, putting a last dab of the mysterious
compound so perilously near her brother's mouth that William flushed
again and was silent.

A little later I witnessed his escape, when Mrs. Todd had taken the
foolish risk of going down cellar.  There was a horse and wagon outside
the garden fence, and presently we stood where we could see him driving
up the hill with thoughtless speed.  Mrs. Todd said nothing, but
watched him affectionately out of sight.

"It serves to keep the mosquitoes off," she said, and a moment later it
occurred to my slow mind that she spoke of the penny-royal lotion.  "I
don't know sometimes but William's kind of poetical," she continued, in
her gentlest voice.  "You 'd think if anything could cure him of it, 't
would be the fish business."

It was only twenty minutes past six on a summer morning, but we both
sat down to rest as if the activities of the day were over.  Mrs. Todd
rocked gently for a time, and seemed to be lost, though not poorly,
like Macbeth, in her thoughts.  At last she resumed relations with her
actual surroundings.  "I shall now put my lobsters on.  They'll make us
a good supper," she announced.  "Then I can let the fire out for all
day; give it a holiday, same's William.  You can have a little one now,
nice an' hot, if you ain't got all the breakfast you want.  Yes, I 'll
put the lobsters on.  William was very thoughtful to bring 'em over;
William is thoughtful; if he only had a spark o' ambition, there be few
could match him."

This unusual concession was afforded a sympathetic listener from the
depths of the kitchen closet.  Mrs. Todd was getting out her old iron
lobster pot, and began to speak of prosaic affairs.  I hoped that I
should hear something more about her brother and their island life, and
sat idly by the kitchen window looking at the morning glories that
shaded it, believing that some flaw of wind might set Mrs. Todd's mind
on its former course.  Then it occurred to me that she had spoken about
our supper rather than our dinner, and I guessed that she might have
some great scheme before her for the day.

When I had loitered for some time and there was no further word about
William, and at last I was conscious of receiving no attention
whatever, I went away.  It was something of a disappointment to find
that she put no hindrance in the way of my usual morning affairs, of
going up to the empty little white schoolhouse on the hill where I did
my task of writing.  I had been almost sure of a holiday when I
discovered that Mrs. Todd was likely to take one herself; we had not
been far afield to gather herbs and pleasures for many days now, but a
little later she had silently vanished.  I found my luncheon ready on
the table in the little entry, wrapped in its shining old homespun
napkin, and as if by way of special consolation, there was a stone
bottle of Mrs. Todd's best spruce beer, with a long piece of cod line
wound round it by which it could be lowered for coolness into the deep
schoolhouse well.

I walked away with a dull supply of writing-paper and these provisions,
feeling like a reluctant child who hopes to be called back at every
step.  There was no relenting voice to be heard, and when I reached the
schoolhouse, I found that I had left an open window and a swinging
shutter the day before, and the sea wind that blew at evening had
fluttered my poor sheaf of papers all about the room.

So the day did not begin very well, and I began to recognize that it
was one of the days when nothing could be done without company.  The
truth was that my heart had gone trouting with William, but it would
have been too selfish to say a word even to one's self about spoiling
his day.  If there is one way above another of getting so close to
nature that one simply is a piece of nature, following a primeval
instinct with perfect self-forgetfulness and forgetting everything
except the dreamy consciousness of pleasant freedom, it is to take the
course of a shady trout brook.  The dark pools and the sunny shallows
beckon one on; the wedge of sky between the trees on either bank, the
speaking, companioning noise of the water, the amazing importance of
what one is doing, and the constant sense of life and beauty make a
strange transformation of the quick hours.  I had a sudden memory of
all this, and another, and another.  I could not get myself free from
"fishing and wishing."

At that moment I heard the unusual sound of wheels, and I looked past
the high-growing thicket of wild-roses and straggling sumach to see the
white nose and meagre shape of the Caplin horse; then I saw William
sitting in the open wagon, with a small expectant smile upon his face.

"I 've got two lines," he said.  "I was quite a piece up the road.  I
thought perhaps 't was so you 'd feel like going."

There was enough excitement for most occasions in hearing William speak
three sentences at once.  Words seemed but vain to me at that bright
moment.  I stepped back from the schoolhouse window with a beating
heart.  The spruce-beer bottle was not yet in the well, and with that
and my luncheon, and Pleasure at the helm, I went out into the happy
world.  The land breeze was blowing, and, as we turned away, I saw a
flutter of white go past the window as I left the schoolhouse and my
morning's work to their neglected fate.



II.

One seldom gave way to a cruel impulse to look at an ancient seafaring
William, but one felt as if he were a growing boy; I only hope that he
felt much the same about me.  He did not wear the fishing clothes that
belonged to his sea-going life, but a strangely shaped old suit of
tea-colored linen garments that might have been brought home years ago
from Canton or Bombay.  William had a peculiar way of giving silent
assent when one spoke, but of answering your unspoken thoughts as if
they reached him better than words.  "I find them very easy," he said,
frankly referring to the clothes.  "Father had them in his old
sea-chest."

The antique fashion, a quaint touch of foreign grace and even
imagination about the cut were very pleasing; if ever Mr. William
Blackett had faintly resembled an old beau, it was upon that day.  He
now appeared to feel as if everything had been explained between us, as
if everything were quite understood; and we drove for some distance
without finding it necessary to speak again about anything.  At last,
when it must have been a little past nine o'clock, he stopped the horse
beside a small farmhouse, and nodded when I asked if I should get down
from the wagon.  "You can steer about northeast right across the
pasture," he said, looking from under the eaves of his hat with an
expectant smile.  "I always leave the team here."

I helped to unfasten the harness, and William led the horse away to the
barn.  It was a poor-looking little place, and a forlorn woman looked
at us through the window before she appeared at the door.  I told her
that Mr. Blackett and I came up from the Landing to go fishing.  "He
keeps a-comin', don't he?" she answered, with a funny little laugh, to
which I was at a loss to find answer.  When he joined us, I could not
see that he took notice of her presence in any way, except to take an
armful of dried salt fish from a corded stack in the back of the wagon
which had been carefully covered with a piece of old sail.  We had left
a wake of their pungent flavor behind us all the way.  I wondered what
was going to become of the rest of them and some fresh lobsters which
were also disclosed to view, but he laid the present gift on the
doorstep without a word, and a few minutes later, when I looked back as
we crossed the pasture, the fish were being carried into the house.

I could not see any signs of a trout brook until I came close upon it
in the bushy pasture, and presently we struck into the low woods of
straggling spruce and fir mixed into a tangle of swamp maples and
alders which stretched away on either hand up and down stream.  We
found an open place in the pasture where some taller trees seemed to
have been overlooked rather than spared.  The sun was bright and hot by
this time, and I sat down in the shade while William produced his lines
and cut and trimmed us each a slender rod.  I wondered where Mrs. Todd
was spending the morning, and if later she would think that pirates had
landed and captured me from the schoolhouse.



III.

The brook was giving that live, persistent call to a listener that
trout brooks always make; it ran with a free, swift current even here,
where it crossed an apparently level piece of land.  I saw two
unpromising, quick barbel chase each other upstream from bank to bank
as we solemnly arranged our hooks and sinkers.  I felt that William's
glances changed from anxiety to relief when he found that I was used to
such gear; perhaps he felt that we must stay together if I could not
bait my own hook, but we parted happily, full of a pleasing sense of
companionship.

William had pointed me up the brook, but I chose to go down, which was
only fair because it was his day, though one likes as well to follow
and see where a brook goes as to find one's way to the places it comes
from, and its tiny springs and headwaters, and in this case trout were
not to be considered.  William's only real anxiety was lest I might
suffer from mosquitoes.  His own complexion was still strangely
impaired by its defenses, but I kept forgetting it, and looking to see
if we were treading fresh pennyroyal underfoot, so efficient was Mrs.
Todd's remedy.  I was conscious, after we parted, and I turned to see
if he were already fishing, and saw him wave his hand gallantly as he
went away, that our friendship had made a great gain.

The moment that I began to fish the brook, I had a sense of its
emptiness; when my bait first touched the water and went lightly down
the quick stream, I knew that there was nothing to lie in wait for it.
It is the same certainty that comes when one knocks at the door of an
empty house, a lack of answering consciousness and of possible
response; it is quite different if there is any life within.  But it
was a lovely brook, and I went a long way through woods and breezy open
pastures, and found a forsaken house and overgrown farm, and laid up
many pleasures for future joy and remembrance.  At the end of the
morning I came back to our meeting-place hungry and without any fish.
William was already waiting, and we did not mention the matter of
trout.  We ate our luncheons with good appetites, and William brought
our two stone bottles of spruce beer from the deep place in the brook
where he had left them to cool.  Then we sat awhile longer in peace and
quietness on the green banks.

As for William, he looked more boyish than ever, and kept a more remote
and juvenile sort of silence.  Once I wondered how he had come to be so
curiously wrinkled, forgetting, absent-mindedly, to recognize the
effects of time.  He did not expect any one else to keep up a vain show
of conversation, and so I was silent as well as he.  I glanced at him
now and then, but I watched the leaves tossing against the sky and the
red cattle moving in the pasture.  "I don't know's we need head for
home.  It's early yet," he said at last, and I was as startled as if
one of the gray firs had spoken.

"I guess I 'll go up-along and ask after Thankful Hight's folks," he
continued.  "Mother 'd like to get word;" and I nodded a pleased assent.



IV.

William led the way across the pasture, and I followed with a deep
sense of pleased anticipation.  I do not believe that my companion had
expected me to make any objection, but I knew that he was gratified by
the easy way that his plans for the day were being seconded.  He gave a
look at the sky to see if there were any portents, but the sky was
frankly blue; even the doubtful morning haze had disappeared.

We went northward along a rough, clayey road, across a bare-looking,
sunburnt country full of tiresome long slopes where the sun was hot and
bright, and I could not help observing the forlorn look of the farms.
There was a great deal of pasture, but it looked deserted, and I
wondered afresh why the people did not raise more sheep when that
seemed the only possible use to make of their land.  I said so to Mr.
Blackett, who gave me a look of pleased surprise.

"That's what She always maintains," he said eagerly.  "She 's right
about it, too; well, you 'll see!"  I was glad to find myself approved,
but I had not the least idea whom he meant, and waited until he felt
like speaking again.

A few minutes later we drove down a steep hill and entered a large
tract of dark spruce woods.  It was delightful to be sheltered from the
afternoon sun, and when we had gone some distance in the shade, to my
great pleasure William turned the horse's head toward some bars, which
he let down, and I drove through into one of those narrow, still,
sweet-scented by-ways which seem to be paths rather than roads.  Often
we had to put aside the heavy drooping branches which barred the way,
and once, when a sharp twig struck William in the face, he announced
with such spirit that somebody ought to go through there with an axe,
that I felt unexpectedly guilty.  So far as I now remember, this was
William's only remark all the way through the woods to Thankful Hight's
folks, but from time to time he pointed or nodded at something which I
might have missed: a sleepy little owl snuggled into the bend of a
branch, or a tall stalk of cardinal flowers where the sunlight came
down at the edge of a small, bright piece of marsh.  Many times, being
used to the company of Mrs. Todd and other friends who were in the
habit of talking, I came near making an idle remark to William, but I
was for the most part happily preserved; to be with him only for a
short time was to live on a different level, where thoughts served best
because they were thoughts in common; the primary effect upon our minds
of the simple things and beauties that we saw.  Once when I caught
sight of a lovely gay pigeon-woodpecker eyeing us curiously from a dead
branch, and instinctively turned toward William, he gave an indulgent,
comprehending nod which silenced me all the rest of the way.  The
wood-road was not a place for common noisy conversation; one would
interrupt the birds and all the still little beasts that belonged
there.  But it was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle
speech may become in one's self.  One need not always be saying
something in this noisy world.  I grew conscious of the difference
between William's usual fashion of life and mine; for him there were
long days of silence in a sea-going boat, and I could believe that he
and his mother usually spoke very little because they so perfectly
understood each other.  There was something peculiarly unresponding
about their quiet island in the sea, solidly fixed into the still
foundations of the world, against whose rocky shores the sea beats and
calls and is unanswered.

We were quite half an hour going through the woods; the horse's feet
made no sound on the brown, soft track under the dark evergreens.  I
thought that we should come out at last into more pastures, but there
was no half-wooded strip of land at the end; the high woods grew
squarely against an old stone wall and a sunshiny open field, and we
came out suddenly into broad daylight that startled us and even
startled the horse, who might have been napping as he walked, like an
old soldier.  The field sloped up to a low unpainted house that faced
the east.  Behind it were long, frost-whitened ledges that made the
hill, with strips of green turf and bushes between.  It was the
wildest, most Titanic sort of pasture country up there; there was a
sort of daring in putting a frail wooden house before it, though it
might have the homely field and honest woods to front against.  You
thought of the elements and even of possible volcanoes as you looked up
the stony heights.  Suddenly I saw that a region of what I had thought
gray stones was slowly moving, as if the sun was making my eyesight
unsteady.

"There's the sheep!" exclaimed William, pointing eagerly.  "You see the
sheep?" and sure enough, it was a great company of woolly backs, which
seemed to have taken a mysterious protective resemblance to the ledges
themselves.  I could discover but little chance for pasturage on that
high sunburnt ridge, but the sheep were moving steadily in a satisfied
way as they fed along the slopes and hollows.

"I never have seen half so many sheep as these, all summer long!" I
cried with admiration.

"There ain't so many," answered William soberly.  "It's a great sight.
They do so well because they 're shepherded, but you can't beat sense
into some folks."

"You mean that somebody stays and watches them?" I asked.

"She observed years ago in her readin' that they don't turn out their
flocks without protection anywhere but in the State o' Maine," returned
William.  "First thing that put it into her mind was a little old book
mother's got; she read it one time when she come out to the Island.
They call it the 'Shepherd o' Salisbury Plain.'  'T was n't the purpose
o' the book to most, but when she read it, 'There, Mis' Blackett!' she
said, 'that's where we 've all lacked sense; our Bibles ought to have
taught us that what sheep need is a shepherd.'  You see most folks
about here gave up sheep-raisin' years ago 'count o' the dogs.  So she
gave up school-teachin' and went out to tend her flock, and has
shepherded ever since, an' done well."

For William, this approached an oration.  He spoke with enthusiasm, and
I shared the triumph of the moment.  "There she is now!" he exclaimed,
in a different tone, as the tall figure of a woman came following the
flock and stood still on the ridge, looking toward us as if her eyes
had been quick to see a strange object in the familiar emptiness of the
field.  William stood up in the wagon, and I thought he was going to
call or wave his hand to her, but he sat down again more clumsily than
if the wagon had made the familiar motion of a boat, and we drove on
toward the house.

It was a most solitary place to live,--a place where one might think
that a life could hide itself.  The thick woods were between the farm
and the main road, and as one looked up and down the country, there was
no other house in sight.

"Potatoes look well," announced William.  "The old folks used to say
that there wa'n't no better land outdoors than the Hight field."

I found myself possessed of a surprising interest in the shepherdess,
who stood far away in the hill pasture with her great flock, like a
figure of Millet's, high against the sky.



V.

Everything about the old farmhouse was clean and orderly, as if the
green dooryard were not only swept, but dusted.  I saw a flock of
turkeys stepping off carefully at a distance, but there was not the
usual untidy flock of hens about the place to make everything look in
disarray.  William helped me out of the wagon as carefully as if I had
been his mother, and nodded toward the open door with a reassuring look
at me; but I waited until he had tied the horse and could lead the way,
himself.  He took off his hat just as we were going in, and stopped for
a moment to smooth his thin gray hair with his hand, by which I saw
that we had an affair of some ceremony.  We entered an old-fashioned
country kitchen, the floor scrubbed into unevenness, and the doors well
polished by the touch of hands.  In a large chair facing the window
there sat a masterful-looking old woman with the features of a warlike
Roman emperor, emphasized by a bonnet-like black cap with a band of
green ribbon.  Her sceptre was a palm-leaf fan.

William crossed the room toward her, and bent his head close to her ear.

"Feelin' pretty well to-day, Mis' Hight?" he asked, with all the voice
his narrow chest could muster.

"No, I ain't, William.  Here I have to set," she answered coldly, but
she gave an inquiring glance over his shoulder at me.

"This is the young lady who is stopping with Almiry this summer," he
explained, and I approached as if to give the countersign.  She offered
her left hand with considerable dignity, but her expression never
seemed to change for the better.  A moment later she said that she was
pleased to meet me, and I felt as if the worst were over.  William must
have felt some apprehension, while I was only ignorant, as we had come
across the field.  Our hostess was more than disapproving, she was
forbidding; but I was not long in suspecting that she felt the natural
resentment of a strong energy that has been defeated by illness and
made the spoil of captivity.

"Mother well as usual since you was up last year?" and William replied
by a series of cheerful nods.  The mention of dear Mrs. Blackett was a
help to any conversation.

"Been fishin', ashore," he explained, in a somewhat conciliatory voice.
"Thought you'd like a few for winter," which explained at once the
generous freight we had brought in the back of the wagon.  I could see
that the offering was no surprise, and that Mrs. Hight was interested.

"Well, I expect they 're good as the last," she said, but did not even
approach a smile.  She kept a straight, discerning eye upon me.

"Give the lady a cheer," she admonished William, who hastened to place
close by her side one of the straight-backed chairs that stood against
the kitchen wall.  Then he lingered for a moment like a timid boy.  I
could see that he wore a look of resolve, but he did not ask the
permission for which he evidently waited.

"You can go search for Esther," she said, at the end of a long pause
that became anxious for both her guests.  "Esther 'd like to see her;"
and William in his pale nankeens disappeared with one light step and
was off.



VI.

"Don't speak too loud, it jars a person's head," directed Mrs. Hight
plainly.  "Clear an' distinct is what reaches me best.  Any news to the
Landin'?"

I was happily furnished with the particulars of a sudden death, and an
engagement of marriage between a Caplin, a seafaring widower home from
his voyage, and one of the younger Harrises; and now Mrs. Hight really
smiled and settled herself in her chair.  We exhausted one subject
completely before we turned to the other.  One of the returning turkeys
took an unwarrantable liberty, and, mounting the doorstep, came in and
walked about the kitchen without being observed by its strict owner;
and the tin dipper slipped off its nail behind us and made an
astonishing noise, and jar enough to reach Mrs. Hight's inner ear and
make her turn her head to look at it; but we talked straight on.  We
came at last to understand each other upon such terms of friendship
that she unbent her majestic port and complained to me as any poor old
woman might of the hardships of her illness.  She had already fixed
various dates upon the sad certainty of the year when she had the
shock, which had left her perfectly helpless except for a clumsy left
hand which fanned and gestured, and settled and resettled the folds of
her dress, but could do no comfortable time-shortening work.

"Yes 'm, you can feel sure I use it what I can," she said severely.
"'Twas a long spell before I could let Esther go forth in the mornin'
till she 'd got me up an' dressed me, but now she leaves things ready
overnight and I get 'em as I want 'em with my light pair o' tongs, and
I feel very able about helpin' myself to what I once did.  Then when
Esther returns, all she has to do is to push me out here into the
kitchen.  Some parts o' the year Esther stays out all night, them
moonlight nights when the dogs are apt to be after the sheep, but she
don't use herself as hard as she once had to.  She 's well able to hire
somebody, Esther is, but there, you can't find no hired man that wants
to git up before five o'clock nowadays; 't ain't as 't was in my time.
They 're liable to fall asleep, too, and them moonlight nights she's so
anxious she can't sleep, and out she goes.  There's a kind of a fold,
she calls it, up there in a sheltered spot, and she sleeps up in a
little shed she 's got,--built it herself for lambin' time and when the
poor foolish creatur's gets hurt or anything.  I 've never seen it, but
she says it's in a lovely spot and always pleasant in any weather.  You
see off, other side of the ridge, to the south'ard, where there's
houses.  I used to think some time I 'd get up to see it again, and all
them spots she lives in, but I sha'n't now.  I 'm beginnin' to go back;
an' 't ain't surprisin'.  I 've kind of got used to disappointments,"
and the poor soul drew a deep sigh.



VII.

It was long before we noticed the lapse of time; I not only told every
circumstance known to me of recent events among the households of Mrs.
Todd's neighborhood at the shore, but Mrs. Hight became more and more
communicative on her part, and went carefully into the genealogical
descent and personal experience of many acquaintances, until between us
we had pretty nearly circumnavigated the globe and reached Dunnet
Landing from an opposite direction to that in which we had started.  It
was long before my own interest began to flag; there was a flavor of
the best sort in her definite and descriptive fashion of speech.  It
may be only a fancy of my own that in the sound and value of many
words, with their lengthened vowels and doubled cadences, there is some
faint survival on the Maine coast of the sound of English speech of
Chaucer's time.

At last Mrs. Thankful Hight gave a suspicious look through the window.

"Where do you suppose they be?" she asked me.  "Esther must ha' been
off to the far edge o' everything.  I doubt William ain't been able to
find her; can't he hear their bells?  His hearin' all right?"

William had heard some herons that morning which were beyond the reach
of my own ears, and almost beyond eyesight in the upper skies, and I
told her so.  I was luckily preserved by some unconscious instinct from
saying that we had seen the shepherdess so near as we crossed the
field.  Unless she had fled faster than Atalanta, William must have
been but a few minutes in reaching her immediate neighborhood.  I now
discovered with a quick leap of amusement and delight in my heart that
I had fallen upon a serious chapter of romance.  The old woman looked
suspiciously at me, and I made a dash to cover with a new piece of
information; but she listened with lofty indifference, and soon
interrupted my eager statements.

"Ain't William been gone some considerable time?" she demanded, and
then in a milder tone: "The time has re'lly flown; I do enjoy havin'
company.  I set here alone a sight o' long days.  Sheep is dreadful
fools; I expect they heard a strange step, and set right off through
bush an' brier, spite of all she could do.  But William might have the
sense to return, 'stead o' searchin' about.  I want to inquire of him
about his mother.  What was you goin' to say?  I guess you 'll have
time to relate it."

My powers of entertainment were on the ebb, but I doubled my diligence
and we went on for another half-hour at least with banners flying, but
still William did not reappear.  Mrs. Hight frankly began to show
fatigue.

"Somethin' 's happened, an' he's stopped to help her," groaned the old
lady, in the middle of what I had found to tell her about a rumor of
disaffection with the minister of a town I merely knew by name in the
weekly newspaper to which Mrs. Todd subscribed.  "You step to the door,
dear, an' look if you can't see 'em."  I promptly stepped, and once
outside the house I looked anxiously in the direction which William had
taken.

To my astonishment I saw all the sheep so near that I wonder we had not
been aware in the house of every bleat and tinkle.  And there, within a
stone's-throw, on the first long gray ledge that showed above the
juniper, were William and the shepherdess engaged in pleasant
conversation.  At first I was provoked and then amused, and a thrill of
sympathy warmed my whole heart.  They had seen me and risen as if by
magic; I had a sense of being the messenger of Fate.  One could almost
hear their sighs of regret as I appeared; they must have passed a
lovely afternoon.  I hurried into the house with the reassuring news
that they were not only in sight but perfectly safe, with all the sheep.



VIII.

Mrs. Hight, like myself, was spent with conversation, and had ceased
even the one activity of fanning herself.  I brought a desired drink of
water, and happily remembered some fruit that was left from my
luncheon.  She revived with splendid vigor, and told me the simple
history of her later years since she had been smitten in the prime of
her life by the stroke of paralysis, and her husband had died and left
her alone with Esther and a mortgage on their farm.  There was only one
field of good land, but they owned a great region of sheep pasture and
a little woodland.  Esther had always been laughed at for her belief in
sheep-raising when one by one their neighbors were giving up their
flocks, and when everything had come to the point of despair she had
raised all the money and bought all the sheep she could, insisting that
Maine lambs were as good as any, and that there was a straight path by
sea to Boston market.  And by tending her flock herself she had managed
to succeed; she had made money enough to pay off the mortgage five
years ago, and now what they did not spend was safe in the bank.  "It
has been stubborn work, day and night, summer and winter, an' now she
's beginnin' to get along in years," said the old mother sadly.  "She
's tended me 'long o' the sheep, an' she 's been a good girl right
along, but she ought to have been a teacher;" and Mrs. Hight sighed
heavily and plied the fan again.

We heard voices, and William and Esther entered; they did not know that
it was so late in the afternoon.  William looked almost bold, and oddly
like a happy young man rather than an ancient boy.  As for Esther, she
might have been Jeanne d'Arc returned to her sheep, touched with age
and gray with the ashes of a great remembrance.  She wore the simple
look of sainthood and unfeigned devotion.  My heart was moved by the
sight of her plain sweet face, weather-worn and gentle in its looks,
her thin figure in its close dress, and the strong hand that clasped a
shepherd's staff, and I could only hold William in new reverence; this
silent farmer-fisherman who knew, and he alone, the noble and patient
heart that beat within her breast.  I am not sure that they
acknowledged even to themselves that they had always been lovers; they
could not consent to anything so definite or pronounced; but they were
happy in being together in the world.  Esther was untouched by the fret
and fury of life; she had lived in sunshine and rain among her silly
sheep, and been refined instead of coarsened, while her touching
patience with a ramping old mother, stung by the sense of defeat and
mourning her lost activities, had given back a lovely self-possession,
and habit of sweet temper.  I had seen enough of old Mrs. Hight to know
that nothing a sheep might do could vex a person who was used to the
uncertainties and severities of her companionship.



IX.

Mrs. Hight told her daughter at once that she had enjoyed a beautiful
call, and got a great many new things to think of.  This was said so
frankly in my hearing that it gave a consciousness of high reward, and
I was indeed recompensed by the grateful look in Esther's eyes.  We did
not speak much together, but we understood each other.  For the poor
old woman did not read, and could not sew or knit with her helpless
hand, and they were far from any neighbors, while her spirit was as
eager in age as in youth, and expected even more from a disappointing
world.  She had lived to see the mortgage paid and money in the bank,
and Esther's success acknowledged on every hand, and there were still a
few pleasures left in life.  William had his mother, and Esther had
hers, and they had not seen each other for a year, though Mrs. Hight
had spoken of a year's making no change in William even at his age.
She must have been in the far eighties herself, but of a noble courage
and persistence in the world she ruled from her stiff-backed
rocking-chair.

William unloaded his gift of dried fish, each one chosen with perfect
care, and Esther stood by, watching him, and then she walked across the
field with us beside the wagon.  I believed that I was the only one who
knew their happy secret, and she blushed a little as we said good-by.

"I hope you ain't goin' to feel too tired, mother's so deaf; no, I hope
you won't be tired," she said kindly, speaking as if she well knew what
tiredness was.  We could hear the neglected sheep bleating on the hill
in the next moment's silence.  Then she smiled at me, a smile of noble
patience, of uncomprehended sacrifice, which I can never forget.  There
was all the remembrance of disappointed hopes, the hardships of winter,
the loneliness of single-handedness in her look, but I understood, and
I love to remember her worn face and her young blue eyes.

"Good-by, William," she said gently, and William said good-by, and gave
her a quick glance, but he did not turn to look back, though I did, and
waved my hand as she was putting up the bars behind us.  Nor did he
speak again until we had passed through the dark woods and were on our
way homeward by the main road.  The grave yearly visit had been changed
from a hope into a happy memory.

"You can see the sea from the top of her pasture hill," said William at
last.

"Can you?" I asked, with surprise.

"Yes, it's very high land; the ledges up there show very plain in clear
weather from the top of our island, and there's a high upstandin' tree
that makes a landmark for the fishin' grounds."  And William gave a
happy sigh.

When we had nearly reached the Landing, my companion looked over into
the back of the wagon and saw that the piece of sailcloth was safe,
with which he had covered the dried fish.  "I wish we had got some
trout," he said wistfully.  "They always appease Almiry, and make her
feel 't was worth while to go."

I stole a glance at William Blackett.  We had not seen a solitary
mosquito, but there was a dark stripe across his mild face, which might
have been an old scar won long ago in battle.



WHERE'S NORA?

I.

"Where's Nora?"

The speaker was a small, serious-looking old Irishman, one of those
Patricks who are almost never called Pat.  He was well-dressed and
formal, and wore an air of dignified authority.

"I don't know meself where's Nora then, so I don't," answered his
companion.  "The shild would n't stop for a sup o' breakfast before she
'd go out to see the town, an' nobody 's seen the l'aste smitch of her
since.  I might sweep the streets wit' a broom and I could n't find
her."

"Maybe she's strayed beyand and gone losing in the strange place,"
suggested Mr. Quin, with an anxious glance.  "Did n't none o' the folks
go wit' her?"

"How would annybody be goin' an' she up an' away before there was a
foot out o' bed in the house?" answered Mike Duffy impatiently.  "'T
was herself that caught sight of Nora stealin' out o' the door like a
thief, an' meself getting me best sleep at the time.  Herself had to
sit up an' laugh in the bed and be plaguin' me wit' her tarkin'.  'Look
at Nora!' says she.  'Where's Nora?' says I, wit' a great start.  I
thought something had happened the poor shild.  'Oh, go to slape, you
fool!' says Mary Ann.  ''T is only four o'clock,' says she, 'an' that
grasshopper greenhorn can't wait for broad day till she go out an' see
the whole of Ameriky.'  So I wint off to sleep again; the first bell
was biginnin' on the mill, and I had an hour an' a piece, good, to
meself after that before Mary Ann come scoldin'.  I don't be sleepin'
so well as some folks the first part of the night."

Mr. Patrick Quin ignored the interest of this autobiographical
statement, and with a contemptuous shake of the head began to feel in
his pocket for a pipe.  Every one knew that Mike Duffy was a person
much too fond of his ease, and that all the credit of their prosperity
belonged to his hard-worked wife.  She had reared a family of
respectable sons and daughters, who were all settled and doing well for
themselves, and now she was helping to bring out some nephews and
nieces from the old country.  She was proud to have been born a Quin;
Patrick Quin was her brother and a man of consequence.

"'Deed, I 'd like well to see the poor shild," said Patrick.  "I'd no
thought they 'd land before the day or to-morrow mornin', or I 'd have
been over last night.  I suppose she brought all the news from home?"

"The folks is all well, thanks be to God," proclaimed Mr. Duffy
solemnly.  "'T was late when she come; 't was on the quarter to nine
she got here.  There 's been great deaths after the winther among the
old folks.  Old Peter Murphy's gone, she says, an' his brother that
lived over by Ballycannon died the same week with him, and Dan Donahoe
an' Corny Donahoe's lost their old aunt on the twelfth of March, that
gave them her farm to take care of her before I came out.  She was old
then, too."

"Faix, it was time for the old lady, so it was," said Patrick Quin,
with affectionate interest.  "She 'd be the oldest in the parish this
tin years past."

"Nora said 't was a fine funeral; they 'd three priests to her, and
everything of the best.  Nora was there herself and all our folks.  The
b'ys was very proud of her for being so old and respicted."

"Sure, Mary was an old woman, and I first coming out," repeated
Patrick, with feeling.  "I went up to her that Monday night, and I
sailing on a Wednesday, an' she gave me her blessing and a present of
five shillings.  She said then she 'd see me no more; 't was poor old
Mary had the giving hand, God bless her and save her!  I joked her that
she 'd soon be marrying and coming out to Ameriky like meself.  'No,'
says she, 'I 'm too old.  I 'll die here where I was born; this old
farm is me one home o' the world, and I 'll never be afther l'avin' it;
't is right enough for you young folks to go,' says she.  I could n't
get my mouth open to answer her.  'T was meself that was very homesick
in me inside, coming away from the old place, but I had great boldness
before every one.  'T was old Mary saw the tears in me eyes then.
'Don't mind, Patsy,' says she; 'if you don't do well there, come back
to it an' I 'll be glad to take your folks in till you 'll be afther
getting started again.'  She had n't the money then she got afterward
from her cousin in Dublin; 't was the kind heart of her spoke, an'
meself being but a boy that was young to maintain himself, let alone a
family.  Thanks be to God, I 've done well, afther all, but for me
crooked leg.  I does be dr'amin' of going home sometimes; 't is often
yet I wake up wit' the smell o' the wet bushes in the mornin' when a
man does be goin' to his work at home."

Mike Duffy looked at his brother-in-law with curiosity; the two men
were sitting side by side before Mike's house on a bit of green bank
between the sidewalk and the road.  It was May, and the dandelions were
blooming all about them, thick in the grass.  Patrick Quin readied out
and touched one of them with his stick.  He was a lame man, and had
worked as section hand for the railroad for many years, until the bad
accident which forced him to retire on one of the company's rarely
given pensions.  He had prevented a great disaster on the road; those
who knew him well always said that his position had never been equal to
his ability, but the men who stood above him and the men who were below
him held Patrick Quin at exactly the same estimate.  He had limped
along the road from the clean-looking little yellow house that he owned
not far away on the river-bank, and his mind was upon his errand.

"I come over early to ask the shild would n't she come home wit' me an'
ate her dinner," said Patrick.  "Herself sent me; she's got a great
wash the day, last week being so rainy, an' we niver got word of Nora
being here till this morning, and then everybody had it that passed by,
wondering what got us last night that we were n't there."

"'T was on the quarter to nine she come," said Uncle Mike, taking up
the narrative with importance.  "Herself an' me had blown out the
light, going to bed, when there come a scuttlin' at the door and I
heard a bit of a laugh like the first bird in the morning"--

"'Stop where you are, Bridget,' says I," continued Mr. Quin, without
taking any notice, "'an' I 'll take me third leg and walk over and
bring Nora down to you.'  Bridget's great for the news from home now,
for all she was so sharp to be l'aving it."

"She brought me a fine present, and the mate of it for yourself," said
Mike Duffy.  "Two good thorn sticks for the two of us.  They 're inside
in the house."

"A thorn stick, indeed!  Did she now?" exclaimed Patrick, with unusual
delight.  "The poor shild, did she do that now?  I 've thought manny 's
the time since I got me lameness how well I 'd like one o' those
old-fashioned thorn sticks.  Me own is one o' them sticks a man 'd
carry tin years and toss it into a brook at the ind an' not miss it."

"They 're good thorn sticks, the both of them," said Mike complacently.
"I don't know 'ill I bring 'em out before she comes."

"Is she a pritty slip of a gerrl, I d' know?" asked Patrick, with
increased interest.

"She ain't, then," answered his companion frankly.  "She does be thin
as a young grasshopper, and she 's red-headed, and she 's freckled,
too, from the sea, like all them young things comin' over; but she 's
got a pritty voice, like all her mother's folks, and a quick eye like a
bird's.  The old-country talk's fresh in her mouth, too, so it is; you
'd think you were coming out o' mass some spring morning at home and
hearing all the girls whin they'd be chatting and funning at the boys.
I do be thinking she's a smart little girl, annyway; look at her off to
see the town so early and not back yet, bad manners to her!  She 'll be
wanting some clothes, I suppose; she's very old-fashioned looking; they
does always be wanting new clothes, coming out," and Mike gave an
ostentatious sigh and suggestive glance at his brother-in-law.

"'Deed, I 'm willing to help her get a good start; ain't she me own
sister's shild?" agreed Patrick Quin cheerfully.  "We 've been young
ourselves, too.  Well, then, 'tis bad news of old Mary Donahoe bein'
gone at the farm.  I always thought if I 'd go home how I 'd go along
the fields to get the great welcome from her.  She was one that always
liked to hear folks had done well," and he looked down at his
comfortable, clean old clothes as if they but reminded him how poor a
young fellow he had come away.  "I 'm very sorry afther Mary; she was a
good 'oman, God save her!"

"Faix, it was time for her," insisted Mike, not without sympathy.
"Were you afther wanting her to live forever, the poor soul?  An' the
shild said she 'd the best funeral was ever in the parish of Dunkenny
since she remimbered it.  What could anny one ask more than that, and
she r'aching such an age, the cr'atur'!  Stop here awhile an' you 'll
hear all the tark from Nora; she told over to me all the folks that was
there.  Where has she gone wit' herself, I don't know?  Mary Ann!" he
turned his head toward the house and called in a loud, complaining
tone; "where's Nora, annyway?"

"Here's Nora, then," a sweet girlish voice made unexpected reply, and a
light young figure flitted from the sidewalk behind him and stood lower
down on the green bank.

"What's wanting wit' Nora?" and she stooped quickly like a child to
pick some of the dandelions as if she had found gold.  She had a sprig
of wild-cherry blossom in her dress, which she must have found a good
way out in the country.

"Come now, and speak to Patrick Quin, your mother's own brother, that's
waiting here for you all this time you 've been running over the
place," commanded Mr. Duffy, with some severity.

"An' is it me own Uncle Patsy, dear?" exclaimed Nora, with the sweetest
brogue and most affectionate sincerity.  "Oh, that me mother could see
him too!" and she dropped on her knees beside the lame little man and
kissed him, and knelt there looking at him with delight, holding his
willing hand in both her own.

"An' ain't you got me mother's own looks, too?  Oh, Uncle Patsy, is it
yourself, dear?  I often heard about you, and I brought you me mother's
heart's love, 'deed I did then!  It's many a lovely present of a pound
you 've sent us.  An' I 've got a thorn stick that grew in the hedge,
goin' up the little rise of ground above the Wishin' Brook, sir; mother
said you 'd mind the place well when I told you."

"I do then, me shild," said Patrick Quin, with dignity; "'tis manny the
day we all played there together, for all we 're so scattered now and
some dead, too, God rest them!  Sure, you 're a nice little gerrl, an'
I give you great welcome and the hope you 'll do well.  Come along wit'
me now.  Your Aunty Biddy's jealous to put her two eyes on you, an' we
never getting the news you 'd come till late this morning.  'I 'll go
fetch Nora for you,' says I, to contint her.  'They 'll be tarked out
at Duffy's by this time,' says I."

"Oh, I 'm full o' tark yet!" protested Nora gayly.  "Coom on, then,
Uncle Patsy!" and she gave him her strong young hand as he rose.

"An' how do you be likin' Ameriky?" asked the pleased old man, as they
walked along.

"I like Ameriky fine," answered the girl gravely.  She was taller than
he, though she looked so slender and so young.  "I was very
downhearted, too, l'avin' home and me mother, but I 'll go back to it
some day, God willing, sir; I could n't die wit'out seeing me mother
again.  I 'm all over the place here since daybreak.  I think I 'd like
work best on the railway," and she turned toward him with a resolved
and serious look.

"Wisha! there 's no work at all for a girl like you on the Road," said
Uncle Patsy patiently.  "You 've a bit to learn yet, sure; 't is the
mill you mane."

"There 'll be plinty work to do.  I always thought at home, when I
heard the folks tarking, that I 'd get work on the railway when I 'd
come to Ameriky.  Yis, indeed, sir!" continued Nora earnestly.  "I was
looking at the mills just now, and I heard the great n'ise from them.
I 'd never be afther shutting meself up in anny mill out of the good
air.  I 've no call to go to jail yet in thim mill walls.  Perhaps
there 'd be somebody working next me that I 'd never get to like, sir."

There was something so convinced and decided about these arguments that
Uncle Patsy, usually the calm autocrat of his young relatives, had
nothing whatever to say.  Nora was gently keeping step with his slow
gait.  She had won his heart once for all when she called him by the
old boyish name her mother used forty years before, when they played
together by the Wishing Brook.

"I wonder do you know a b'y named Johnny O'Callahan?" inquired Nora
presently, in a somewhat confidential tone; "a pritty b'y that's
working on the railway; I seen him last night and I coming here; he
ain't a guard at all, but a young fellow that minds the brakes.  We
stopped a long while out there; somethin' got off the rails, and he
adwised wit' me, seeing I was a stranger.  He said he knew you, sir."

"Oh, yes, Johnny O'Callahan.  I know him well; he 's a nice b'y, too,"
answered Patrick Quin approvingly.

"Yis, sir, a pritty b'y," said Nora, and her color brightened for an
instant, but she said no more.



II.

Mike Duffy and his wife came into the Quins' kitchen one week-day
night, dressed in their Sunday clothes; they had been making a visit to
their well-married daughter in Lawrence.  Patrick Quin's chair was
comfortably tipped back against the wall, and Bridget, who looked
somewhat gloomy, was putting away the white supper-dishes.

"Where 's Nora?"  demanded Mike Duffy, after the first salutations.

"You may well say it; I 'm afther missing her every hour in the day,"
lamented Bridget Quin.

"Nora's gone into business on the Road then, so she has," said Patrick,
with an air of fond pride.  He was smoking, and in his shirt-sleeves;
his coat lay on the wooden settee at the other side of the room.

"Hand me me old coat there before you sit down; I want me pocket," he
commanded, and Mike obeyed.  Mary Ann, fresh from her journey, began at
once to give a spirited account of her daughter's best room and general
equipment for housekeeping, but she suddenly became aware that the tale
was of secondary interest.  When the narrator stopped for breath there
was a polite murmur of admiration, but her husband boldly repeated his
question.  "Where's Nora?" he insisted, and the Quins looked at each
other and laughed.

"Ourselves is old hins that's hatched ducks," confessed Patrick.
"Ain't I afther telling you she's gone into trade on the Road?" and he
took his pipe from his mouth,--that after-supper  pipe which neither
prosperity nor adversity was apt to interrupt.  "She 's set up for
herself over-right the long switch, down there at Birch Plains.  Nora
'll soon be rich, the cr'atur'; her mind was on it from the first
start; 't was from one o' them O'Callahan b'ys she got the notion, the
night she come here first a greenhorn."

"Well, well, she's lost no time; ain't she got the invintion!" chuckled
Mr. Michael Duffy, who delighted in the activity of others.  "What
excuse had she for Birch Plains?  There's no town to it."

"'T was a chance on the Road she mint to have from the first,"
explained the proud uncle, forgetting his pipe altogether; "'twas that
she told me the first day she came out, an' she walking along going
home wit' me to her dinner; 't was the first speech I had wit' Nora.
''T is the mills you mane?' says I.  'No, no, Uncle Patsy!' says she,
'it ain't the mills at all, at all; 't is on the Road I 'm going.'  I
t'ought she 'd some wild notion she 'd soon be laughing at, but she
settled down very quiet-like with Aunty Biddy here, knowing yourselves
to be going to Lawrence, and I told her stay as long as she had a mind.
Wisha, she 'd an old apron on her in five minutes' time, an' took hold
wit' the wash, and wint singing like a blackbird out in the yard at the
line.  'Sit down, Aunty!' says she; 'you 're not so light-stepping as
me, an' I 'll tell you all the news from home; an' I 'll get the
dinner, too, when I 've done this,' says she.  Wisha, but she's the
good cook for such a young thing; 't is Bridget says it as well as
meself.  She made a stew that day; 't was like the ones her mother made
Sundays, she said, if they 'd be lucky in getting a piece of meat; 't
was a fine-tasting stew, too; she thinks we 're all rich over here.
'So we are, me dear!' says I, 'but every one don't have the sinse to
believe it.'"

"Spake for yourselves!" exclaimed one of the listeners.  "You do be
like Father Ross, always pr'achin' that we 'd best want less than want
more.  He takes honest folks for fools, poor man," said Mary Ann Duffy,
who had no patience at any time with new ideas.

"An' so she wint on the next two or free days," said Patrick
approvingly, without noticing the interruption, "being as quiet as you
'd ask, and being said by her aunt in everything; and she would n't let
on she was homesick, but she 'd no tark of anything but the folks at
Dunkinny.  When there 'd be nothing to do for an hour she 'd slip out
and be gone wit' herself for a little while, and be very still comin'
in.  Last Thursday, after supper, she ran out; but by the time I 'd
done me pipe, back she came flying in at the door.

"'I 'm going off to a place called Birch Plains to-morrow morning, on
the nine, Uncle Patsy,' says she; 'do you know where it is?' says she.
'I do,' says I; ''t was not far from it I broke me leg wit' the dam'
derrick.  'T was to Jerry Ryan's house they took me first.  There's no
town there at all; 't is the only house in it; Ryan 's the switchman.'

"'Would they take me to lodge for a while, I d' know?' says she, havin'
great business.  'What 'd ye be afther in a place like that?' says I.
'Ryan 's got girls himself, an' they 're all here in the mills, goin'
home Saturday nights, 'less there's some show or some dance.  There's
no money out there.'  She laughed then an' wint back to the door, and
in come Mickey Dunn from McLoughlin's store, lugging the size of
himself of bundles.  'What's all this?' says I; ''t ain't here they
belong; I bought nothing to-day.'  'Don't be scolding!' says she, and
Mickey got out of it laughing.  'I 'm going to be cooking for meself in
the morning!' says she, with her head on one side, like a cock-sparrow.
'You lind me the price o' the fire and I'll pay you in cakes,' says
she, and off she wint then to bed.  'T was before day I heard her at
the stove, and I smelt a baking that made me want to go find it, and
when I come out in the kitchen she 'd the table covered with her
cakeens, large and small.  'What's all this whillalu, me topknot-hin?'
says I.  'Ate that,' says she, and hopped back to the oven-door.  Her
aunt come out then, scolding fine, and whin she saw the great baking
she dropped down in a chair like she'd faint and her breath all gone.
'We 'ont ate them in ten days,' says she; 'no, not till the blue mould
has struck them all, God help us!' says she.  'Don't bother me,' says
Nora; 'I 'm goin' off with them all on the nine.  Uncle Patsy 'll help
me wit' me basket.'

"'Uncle Patsy 'ont now,' says Bridget.  Faix, I thought she was up with
one o' them t'ree days' scolds she 'd have when she was young and the
childre' all the one size.  You could hear the bawls of her a mile away.

"'Whishper, dear,' says Nora; 'I don't want to be livin' on anny of me
folks, and Johnny O'Callahan said all the b'ys was wishing there was
somebody would kape a clane little place out there at Birch
Plains,--with something to ate and the like of a cup of tay.  He says
'tis a good little chance; them big trains does all be waiting there
tin minutes and fifteen minutes at a time, and everybody's hungry.  "I
'll thry me luck for a couple o' days," says I; "'tis no harm, an' I've
tin shillings o' me own that Father Daley gave me wit' a grand blessing
and I l'aving home behind me."'"

"'What tark you have of Johnny O'Callahan,' says I.

"Look at this now!" continued the proud uncle, while Aunt Biddy sat
triumphantly watching the astonished audience; "'t is a letter I got
from the shild last Friday night," and he brought up a small piece of
paper from his coat-pocket.  "She writes a good hand, too.  'Dear Uncle
Patsy,' says she, 'this leaves me well, thanks be to God.  I 'm doing
the roaring trade with me cakes; all Ryan's little boys is selling on
the trains.  I took one pound three the first day: 't was a great
excursion train got stuck fast and they 'd a hot box on a wheel keeping
them an hour and two more trains stopping for them; 't would be a very
pleasant day in the old country that anybody 'd take a pound and three
shillings.  Dear Uncle Patsy, I want a whole half-barrel of that same
flour and ten pounds of sugar, and I 'll pay it back on Sunday.  I sind
respects and duty to Aunty Bridget and all friends; this l'aves me in
great haste.  I wrote me dear mother last night and sint her me first
pound, God bless her.'"

"Look at that for you now!" exclaimed Mike Duffy.  "Did n't I tell
every one here she was fine an' smart?"

"She 'll be soon Prisident of the Road," announced Aunt Mary Ann, who,
having been energetic herself, was pleased to recognize the same
quality in others.

"She don't be so afraid of the worruk as the worruk's afraid of her,"
said Aunt Bridget admiringly.  "She 'll have her fling for a while and
be glad to go in and get a good chance in the mill, and be kaping her
plants in the weave-room windows this winter with the rest of the
girls.  Come, tell us all about Elleneen and the baby.  I ain't heard a
word about Lawrence yet," she added politely.

"Ellen's doing fine, an' it's a pritty baby.  She's got a good husband,
too, that l'aves her her own way and the keep of his money every
Saturday night," said Mary Ann; and the little company proceeded to the
discussion of a new and hardly less interesting subject.  But before
they parted, they spoke again of Nora.

"She's a fine, crabbed little gerrl, that little Nora," said Mr.
Michael Duffy.

"Thank God, none o' me childre' is red-headed on me; they're no more to
be let an' held than a flick o' fire," said Aunt Mary Ann.  "Who 'd
ever take the notion to be setting up business out there on the Birchy
Plains?"

"Ryan's folks 'll look after her, sure, the same as ourselves,"
insisted Uncle Patsy hopefully, as he lighted his pipe again.  It was
like a summer night; the kitchen windows were all open, the month of
May was nearly at an end, and there was a sober croaking of frogs in
the low fields that lay beyond the village.



III.

"Where's Nora?"  Young Johnny O'Callahan was asking the question; the
express had stopped for water, and he seemed to be the only passenger;
this was his day off.

Mrs. Ryan was sitting on her doorstep to rest in the early evening; her
husband had been promoted from switch-tender to boss of the great
water-tank which was just beginning to be used, and there was talk of
further improvements and promotions at Birch Plains; but the
good-natured wife sensibly declared that the better off a woman was,
the harder she always had to work.

She took a long look at Johnny, who was dressed even more carefully
than if it were a pleasant Sunday.

"This don't be your train, annyway," she answered, in a meditative
tone.  "How come you here now all so fine, I 'd like to know, riding in
the cars like a lord; ain't you brakeman yet on old twinty-four?"

"'Deed I am, Mrs. Ryan; you would n't be afther grudging a boy his day
off?  Where's Nora?"

"She's gone up the road a bitteen," said Mrs. Ryan, as if she suddenly
turned to practical affairs.  "She 's worked hard the day, poor shild!
and she took the cool of the evening, and the last bun she had left,
and wint away with herself.  I kep' the taypot on the stove for her,
but she 'd have none at all, at all!"

The young man turned away, and Mrs. Ryan looked after him with an
indulgent smile.  "He's a pritty b'y," she said.  "I 'd like well if he
'd give a look at one o' me own gerrls; Julia, now, would look well
walking with him, she 's so dark.  He's got money saved.  I saw the
first day he come after the cakeens 't was the one that baked them was
in his mind.  She's lucky, is Nora; well, I'm glad of it."

It was fast growing dark, and Johnny's eyes were still dazzled by the
bright lights of the train as he stepped briskly along the narrow
country road.  The more he had seen Nora and the better he liked her,
the less she would have to say to him, and tonight he meant to find her
and have a talk.  He had only succeeded in getting half a dozen words
at a time since the night of their first meeting on the slow train,
when she had gladly recognized the peculiar brogue of her own
country-side, as Johnny called the names of the stations, and Johnny's
quick eyes had seen the tired-looking, uncertain, yet cheerful little
greenhorn in the corner of the car, and asked if she were not the niece
that was coming out to Mrs. Duffy.  He had watched the growth of her
business with delight, and heard praises of the cakes and buns with
willing ears; was it not his own suggestion that had laid the
foundation of Nora's prosperity?  Since their first meeting they had
always greeted each other like old friends, but Nora grew more and more
willing to talk with any of her breathless customers who hurried up the
steep bank from the trains than with him.  She would never take any pay
for her wares from him, and for a week he had stopped coming himself
and sent by a friend his money for the cakes; but one day poor Johnny's
heart could not resist the temptation of going with the rest, and Nora
had given him a happy look, straightforward and significant.  There was
no time for a word, but she picked out a crusty bun, and he took it and
ran back without offering to pay.  It was the best bun that a man ever
ate.  Nora was two months out now, and he had never walked with her an
evening yet.

The shadows were thick under a long row of willows; there was a new
moon, and a faint glow in the west still lit the sky.  Johnny walked on
the grassy roadside with his ears keen to hear the noise of a betraying
pebble under Nora's light foot.  Presently his heart beat loud and all
out of time as a young voice began to sing a little way beyond.

Nora was walking slowly away, but Johnny stopped still to listen.  She
was singing "A Blacksmith Courted Me," one of the quaintest and
sweetest of the old-country songs, as she strolled along in the
soft-aired summer night.  By the time she came to "My love 's gone
along the fields," Johnny hurried on to overtake her; he could hear the
other verses some other time,--the bird was even sweeter than the voice.

Nora was startled for a moment, and stopped singing, as if she were
truly a bird in a bush, but she did not flutter away.  "Is it yourself,
Mister Johnny?" she asked soberly, as if the frank affection of the
song had not been assumed.

"It's meself," answered Johnny, with equal discretion.  "I come out for
a mout'ful of air; it's very hot inside in the town.  Days off are well
enough in winter, but in summer you get a fine air on the train.  'T
was well we both took the same direction.  How is the business?  All
the b'ys are saying they'd be lost without it; sure there ain't a
stomach of them but wants its bun, and they cried the length of the
Road that day the thunder spoiled the baking."

"Take this," said Nora, as if she spoke to a child; "there's a fine
crust of sugar on the top.  'T is one I brought out for me little
supper, but I 'm so pleased wit' bein' rich that I 've no need at all
for 'ating.  An' I 'm as tired as I 'm rich," she added, with a sigh;
"'t is few can say the same in this lazy land."

"Sure, let's ate it together; 'tis a big little cakeen," urged Johnny,
breaking the bun and anxiously offering Nora the larger piece.  "I can
like the taste of anything better by halves, if I 've got company.  You
ought to have a good supper of tay and a piece of steak and some
potaties rather than this!  Don't be giving yourself nothing but the
saved cakes, an' you working so hard!"

"'T is plenty days I 'd a poorer supper when I was at home," said Nora
sadly; "me father dying so young, and all of us begging at me mother's
skirts.  It's all me thought how will I get rich and give me mother all
the fine things that's in the world.  I wish I 'd come over sooner, but
it broke my heart whinever I 'd think of being out of sight of her
face.  She looks old now, me mother does."

Nora may have been touched by Johnny's affectionate interest in her
supper; she forgot all her shyness and drew nearer to him as they
walked along, and he drew a little closer to her.

"My mother is dead these two years," he said simply.  "It makes a man
be very lonesome when his mother 's dead.  I board with my sister
that's married; I 'm not much there at all.  I do be thinking I 'd like
a house of my own.  I 've plinty saved for it."

"I said in the first of coming out that I 'd go home again when I had
fifty pounds," said Nora hastily, and taking the other side of the
narrow road.  "I 've got a piece of it already, and I 've sent back
more beside.  I thought I 'd be gone two years, but some days I think I
won't be so long as that."

"Why don't you be afther getting your mother out?  'T is so warm in the
winter in a good house, and no dampness like there does be at home; and
her brother and her sister both being here."  There was deep anxiety in
Johnny's voice.

"Oh, I don't know indeed!" said Nora.  "She's very wake-hearted, is me
mother; she 'd die coming away from the old place and going to sea.
No, I 'm going to work meself and go home; I 'll have presents, too,
for everybody along the road, and the children 'll be running and
skrieghing afther me, and they 'll all get sweeties from me.  'T is a
very poor neighborhood where we live, but a lovely sight of the say.
It ain't often annybody comes home to it, but 't will be a great day
then, and the poor old folks 'll all be calling afther me: 'Where's
Nora?'  'Show me Nora!'  'Nora, sure, what have you got for me?'  I
'ont forget one of them aither, God helping me!" said Nora, in a
passion of tenderness and pity.  "And, oh, Johnny, then afther that I
'll see me mother in the door!"

Johnny was so close at her side that she slipped her hand into his, and
neither of them stopped to think about so sweet and natural a pleasure.
"I 'd like well to help you, me darlin'," said Johnny.

"Sure, an' was n't it yourself gave me all me good fortune?" exclaimed
Nora.  "I 'd be hard-hearted an' I forgot that so soon and you a Kerry
boy, and me mother often spaking of your mother's folks before ever I
thought of coming out!"

"Sure and would n't you spake the good word to your mother about me
sometime, dear?" pleaded Johnny, openly taking the part of lover.
Nora's hand was still in his; they were walking slowly in the summer
night.  "I loved you the first word I heard out of your mouth,--'twas
like a thrush from home singing to me there in the train.  I said when
I got home that night, I 'd think of no other girl till the day I died."

"Oh!" said Nora, frightened with the change of his voice.  "Oh, Johnny,
't is too soon.  We never walked out this way before; you 'll have to
wait for me; perhaps you 'd soon be tired of poor Nora, and the likes
of one that's all for saving and going home!  You 'll marry a prittier
girl than me some day," she faltered, and let go his hand.

"Indeed, I won't, then," insisted Johnny O'Callahan stoutly.

"Will you let me go home to see me mother?" said Nora soberly.  "I 'm
afther being very homesick, 't is the truth for me.  I 'd lose all me
courage if it wa'n't for the hope of that."

"I will, indeed," said Johnny honestly.

Nora put out her hand again, of her own accord.  "I 'll not say no,
then," she whispered in the dark.  "I can't work long unless I do be
happy, and--well, leave me free till the month's end, and maybe then I
'll say yes.  Stop, stop!" she let go Johnny's hand, and hurried along
by herself in the road, Johnny, in a transport of happiness, walking
very fast to keep up.  She reached a knoll where he could see her
slender shape against the dim western sky.  "Wait till I tell you;
_whisper_!" said Nora eagerly.  "You know there were some of the
managers of the road, the superintendents and all those big ones, came
to Birch Plains yesterday?"

"I did be hearing something," said Johnny, wondering.

"There was a quiet-spoken, nice old gentleman came asking me at the
door for something to eat, and I being there baking; 't is my time in
the morning whin the early trains does be gone, and I 've a fine
stretch till the expresses are beginnin' to screech,--the tin, and the
tin-thirty-two, and the Flying Aigle.  I was in a great hurry with word
of an excursion coming in the afternoon and me stock very low; I 'd
been baking since four o'clock.  He 'd no coat on him, 't was very
warm; and I thought 't was some tramp.  Lucky for me I looked again and
I said, 'What are you wanting, sir?' and then I saw he 'd a beautiful
shirt on him, and was very quiet and pleasant.

"'I came away wit'out me breakfast,' says he.  'Can you give me
something without too much throuble?' says he.  'Do you have anny of
those buns there that I hear the men talking about?'

"'There's buns there, sir,' says I, 'and I 'll make you a cup of tay or
a cup of coffee as quick as I can,' says I, being pleased at the b'ys
giving me buns a good name to the likes of him.  He was very hungry,
too, poor man, an' I ran to Mrs. Ryan to see if she 'd a piece of
beefsteak, and my luck ran before me.  He sat down in me little place
and enjoyed himself well.

"'I had no such breakfast in tin years, me dear,' said he at the last,
very quiet and thankful; and he l'aned back in the chair to rest him,
and I cleared away, being in the great hurry, and he asking me how I
come there, and I tolt him, and how long I 'd been out, and I said it
was two months and a piece, and she being always in me heart, I spoke
of me mother, and all me great hopes.

"Then he sat and thought as if his mind wint to his own business, and I
wint on wit' me baking.  Says he to me after a while, 'We 're going to
build a branch road across country to connect with the great
mountain-roads,' says he; 'the junction 's going to be right here; 't
will give you a big market for your buns.  There 'll be a lunch-counter
in the new station; do you think you could run it?' says he, spaking
very sober.

"'I 'd do my best, sir, annyway,' says I.  'I 'd look out for the best
of help.  Do you know Patrick Quin, sir, that was hurt on the Road and
gets a pinsion, sir?'

"'I do,' says he.  'One of the best men that ever worked for this
company,' says he.

"'He 's me mother's own brother, then, an' he 'll stand by me,' says I;
and he asked me me name and wrote it down in a book he got out of the
pocket of him.  'You shall have the place if you want it,' says he; 'I
won't forget,' and off he wint as quiet as he came."

"Tell me who was it?" said Johnny O'Callahan, listening eagerly.

"Mr. Ryan come tumbling in the next minute, spattered with water from
the tank.  'Well, then,' says he, 'is your fine company gone?'

"'He is,' says I.  'I don't know is it some superintendent?  He 's a
nice man, Mr. Ryan, whoiver he is,' says I.

"''T is the Gineral Manager of the Road,' says he; 'that's who he is,
sure!'

"My apron was all flour, and I was in a great rage wit' so much to do,
but I did the best I could for him.  I 'd do the same for anny one so
hungry," concluded Nora modestly.

"Ain't you got the Queen's luck!" exclaimed Johnny admiringly.  "Your
fortune 's made, me dear.  I 'll have to come off the road to help you."

"Oh, two good trades 'll be better than one!" answered Nora gayly, "and
the big station nor the branch road are n't building yet."

"What a fine little head you 've got," said Johnny, as they reached the
house where the Ryans lived, and the train was whistling that he meant
to take back to town.  "Good-night, annyway, Nora; nobody 'd know from
the size of your head there could be so much inside in it!"

"I'm lucky, too," announced Nora serenely.  "No, I won't give you me
word till the ind of the month.  You may be seeing another gerrl before
that, and calling me the red-headed sparrow.  No, I 'll wait a good
while, and see if the two of us can't do better.  Come, run away,
Johnny.  I 'll drop asleep in the road; I 'm up since four o'clock
making me cakes for plinty b'ys like you."

The Ryans were all abed and asleep, but there was a lamp burning in the
kitchen.  Nora blew it out as she stole into her hot little room.  She
had waited, talking eagerly with Johnny, until they saw the headlight
of the express like a star, far down the long line of double track.



IV.

The summer was not ended before all the railroad men knew about Johnny
O'Callahan's wedding and all his good fortune.  They boarded at the
Ryans' at first, but late in the evenings Johnny and his wife were at
work, building as if they were birds.  First, there was a shed with a
broad counter for the cakes, and a table or two, and the boys did not
fail to notice that Nora had a good sisterly work-basket ready, and was
quick to see that a useful button was off or a stitch needed.  The next
fortnight saw a room added to this, where Nora had her own stove, and
cooking went on steadily.  Then there was another room with white
muslin curtains at the windows, and scarlet-runner beans made haste to
twine themselves to a line of strings for shade.  Johnny would unload a
few feet of clean pine boards from the freight train, and within a day
or two they seemed to be turned into a wing of the small castle by some
easy magic.  The boys used to lay wagers and keep watch, and there was
a cheer out of the engine-cab and all along the platforms one day when
a tidy sty first appeared and a neat pig poked his nose through the
fence of it.  The buns and biscuits grew famous; customers sent for
them from the towns up and down the long railroad line, and the story
of thrifty, kind-hearted little Nora and her steady young husband was
known to a surprising number of persons.  When the branch road was
begun, Nora and Johnny took a few of their particular friends to board,
and business was further increased.  On Sunday they always went into
town to mass and visited their uncles and aunts and Johnny's sister.
Nora never said that she was tired, and almost never was cross.  She
counted her money every Saturday night, and took it to Uncle Patsy to
put into the bank.  She had long talks about her mother with Uncle
Patsy, and he always wrote home for her when she had no time.  Many a
pound went across the sea in the letters, and so another summer came;
and one morning when Johnny's train stopped, Nora stood at the door of
the little house and held a baby in her arms for all the boys to see.
She was white as a ghost and as happy as a queen.  "I 'll be making the
buns again pretty soon," she cried cheerfully.  "Have courage, boys; 't
won't be long first; this one 'll be selling them for me on the Flying
Aigle, don't you forget it!"  And there was a great ringing of the
engine-bell a moment after, when the train started.



V.

It was many and many a long month after this that an old man and a
young woman and a baby were journeying in a side-car along one of the
smooth Irish roads into County Kerry.  They had left the railroad an
hour before; they had landed early that morning at the Cove of Cork.
The side-car was laden deep with bundles and boxes, but the old horse
trotted briskly along until the gossoon who was driving turned into a
cart-track that led through a furzy piece of wild pasture-ground up
toward the dark rain-clouded hills.

"See, over there's Kinmare!" said the old man, looking back.  "Manny 's
the day I 've trudged it and home again.  Oh, I know all this country;
I knew it well whin ayther of you wa'n't born!"

"God be thanked, you did, sir!" responded the gossoon, with fervent
admiration.  He was a pleasant-looking lad in a ragged old coat and an
absolutely roofless hat, through which his bright hair waved in the
summer wind.  "Och, but the folks 'll be looking out of all the doors
to see you come.  I 'll be afther saying I never drove anny party with
so rich a heart; there ain't a poor soul that asked a pinny of us since
we left Bantry but she's got the shillin'.  Look a' the flock coming
now, sir, out of that house.  There's the four-legged lady that pays
the rint watchin' afther them from the door, too.  They think you 're a
gintleman that's shootin', I suppose.  'T is Tom Flaherty's house, poor
crathur; he died last winter, God rest him; 'twas very inconvanient for
him an' every one at the time, wit' snow on the ground and a great dale
of sickness and distress.  Father Daley, poor man, had to go to the
hospital in Dublin wit' himself to get a leg cut off, and we 'd nothing
but rain out of the sky afther that till all the stones in the road was
floatin' to the top."

"Son of old John Flaherty, I suppose?" asked the traveler, with a
knowing air, after he had given the eager children some pennies and
gingerbread, out of a great package.  One of the older girls knew Nora
and climbed to the spare seat at her side to join the company.  "Son of
old John Flaherty, I suppose, that was there before?  There was
Flahertys there and I l'aving home more than thirty-five years ago."

"Sure there 's plinty Flahertys in it now, glory be to God!" answered
the charioteer, with enthusiasm.  "I 'd have no mother meself but for
the Flahertys."  He leaped down to lead the stumbling horse past a deep
rut and some loose stones, and beckoned the little girl sternly from
her proud seat.  "Run home, now!" he said, as she obeyed: "I 'll give
you a fine drive an' I coming down the hill;" but she had joined the
travelers with full intent, and trotted gayly alongside like a little
dog.

The old passenger whispered to his companion that they 'd best double
the gossoon's money, or warm it with two, or three shillings extra, at
least, and Nora nodded her prompt approval.  "The old folks are all
getting away; we 'd best give a bitteen to the young ones they 've left
afther them," said Uncle Patsy, by way of excuse.  "Och, there's more
beggars between here and Queenstown than you 'd find in the whole of
Ameriky."

It seemed to Nora as if her purseful of money were warm against her
breast, like another heart; the sixpences in her pocket all felt warm
to her fingers and hopped by themselves into the pleading hands that
were stretched out all along the way.  The sweet clamor of the Irish
voices, the ready blessings, the frank requests to those returning from
America with their fortunes made, were all delightful to her ears.  How
she had dreamed of this day, and how the sun and shadows were chasing
each other over these upland fields at last!  How close the blue sea
looked to the dark hills!  It seemed as if the return of one prosperous
child gave joy to the whole landscape.  It was the old country the same
as ever,--old Mother Ireland in her green gown, and the warm heart of
her ready and unforgetting.  As for Nora, she could only leave a wake
of silver six-pences behind her, and when these were done, a duller
trail of ha'pennies; and the air was full of blessings as she passed
along the road to Dunkenny.


By this time Nora had stopped talking and laughing.  At first everybody
on the road seemed like her near relation, but the last minutes seemed
like hours, and now and then a tear went shining down her cheek.  The
old man's lips were moving,--he was saying a prayer without knowing it;
they were almost within sight of home.  The poor little white houses,
with their high gable-ends and weather-beaten thatch, that stood about
the fields among the green hedges; the light shower that suddenly fell
out of the clear sky overhead, made an old man's heart tremble in his
breast.  Round the next slope of the hill they should see the old place.

The wheel-track stopped where you turned off to go to the Donahoe farm,
but no old Mary was there to give friendly welcome.  The old man got
stiffly down from the side-car and limped past the gate with a sigh;
but Nora hurried ahead, carrying the big baby, not because he could n't
walk, but because he could.  The young son had inherited his mother's
active disposition, and would run straight away like a spider the
minute his feet were set to the ground.  Now and then, at the sight of
a bird or a flower in the grass, he struggled to get down.  "Whisht,
now!" Nora would say; "and are n't you going to see Granny indeed?
Keep aisy now, darlin'!"

The old heart and the young heart were beating alike as these exiles
followed the narrow footpath round the shoulder of the great hill; they
could hear the lambs bleat and the tinkling of the sheep-bells that
sweet May morning.  From the lower hillside came the sound of voices.
The neighbors had seen them pass, and were calling to each other across
the fields.  Oh, it was home, home! the sight of it, and the smell of
the salt air and the flowers in the bog, the look of the early white
mushrooms in the sod, and the song of the larks overhead and the
blackbirds in the hedges!  Poor Ireland was gay-hearted in the spring
weather, and Nora was there at last.  "Oh, thank God, we 're safe
home!" she said again.  "Look, here's the Wishing Brook; d' ye mind
it?" she called back to the old man.

"I mind everything the day, no fear for me," said Patrick Quin.

The great hillside before them sloped up to meet the blue sky, the
golden gorse spread its splendid tapestry against the green pasture.
There was the tiny house, the one house in Ireland for Nora; its very
windows watched her coming.  A whiff of turf-smoke flickered above the
chimney, the white walls were as white as the clouds above; there was a
figure moving about inside the house, and a bent little woman in her
white frilled cap and a small red shawl pinned about her shoulders came
and stood in the door.

"Oh, me mother, me mother!" cried Nora; then she dropped the baby in
the soft grass, and flew like a pigeon up the hill and into her
mother's arms.



VI.

The gossoon was equal to emergencies; he put down his heavier burden of
goods and picked up the baby, lest it might run back to America.  "God
be praised, what's this coming afther ye?" exclaimed the mother, while
Nora, weeping for joy, ran past her into the house.  "Oh, God bless the
shild that I thought I 'd never see.  Oh!" and she looked again at the
stranger, the breathless old man with the thorn stick, whom everybody
had left behind.  "'T is me brother Patsy!  Oh, me heart's broke wit'
joy!" and she fell on her knees among the daisies.

"It's meself, then!" said Mr. Patrick Quin.  "How are ye the day, Mary?
I always t'ought I 'd see home again, but 't was Nora enticed me now.
Johnny O'Callahan's a good son to ye; he 'd liked well to come with us,
but he gets short l'ave on the Road, and he has a fine, steady job; he
'll see after the business, too, while we 're gone; no, I could n't let
the two childer cross the say alone.  Coom now, don't be sayin' anny
more prayers; sure, we 'll be sayin' them together in the old church
coom Sunday.

"There, don't cry, Mary, don't cry, now!  Coom in in the house!  Sure,
all the folks sint their remimbrance, and hoped you 'd come back with
us and stay a long while.  That's our intintion, too, for you,"
continued Patrick, none the less tearful himself because he was so full
of fine importance; but nobody could stop to listen after the first
moment, and the brother and sister were both crying faster than they
could talk.  A minute later the spirit of the hostess rose to her great
occasion.

"Go, chase those white hins," Nora's mother commanded the gossoon, who
had started back to bring up more of the rich-looking bundles from the
side-car.  "Run them up-hill now, or they 'll fly down to Kinmare.  Go
now, while I stir up me fire and make a cup o' tay.  'T is the laste I
can do whin me folks is afther coming so far!"

"God save all here!" said Uncle Patsy devoutly, as he stepped into the
house.  There sat little Nora with the tired baby in her arms; to tell
the truth, she was crying now for lack of Johnny.  She looked pale, but
her eyes were shining, and a ray of sunlight fell through the door and
brightened her red hair.  She looked quite beautiful and radiant as she
sat there.

"Well, Nora, ye 're here, ain't you?" said the old man.

"Only this morning," said the mother, "whin I opened me eyes I says to
meself: 'Where's Nora?' says I; 'she do be so long wit'out writing home
to me;' look at her now by me own fire!  Wisha, but what's all this
whillalu and stramach down by the brook?  Oh, see now! the folks have
got word; all the folks is here!  Coom out to them, Nora; give me the
shild; coom out, Patsy boy!"

"Where 's Nora?  Where 's Nora?" they could hear the loud cry coming,
as all the neighbors hurried up the hill.



BOLD WORDS AT THE BRIDGE.

I.

"'Well, now,' says I, 'Mrs. Con'ly,' says I, 'how ever you may tark,
'tis nobody's business and I wanting to plant a few pumpkins for me cow
in among me cabbages.  I 've got the right to plant whatever I may
choose, if it's the divil of a crop of t'istles in the middle of me
ground.'  'No ma'am, you ain't,' says Biddy Con'ly; 'you ain't got anny
right to plant t'istles that's not for the public good,' says she; and
I being so hasty wit' me timper, I shuk me fist in her face then, and
herself shuk her fist at me.  Just then Father Brady come by, as luck
ardered, an' recomminded us would we keep the peace.  He knew well I 'd
had my provocation; 't was to herself he spoke first.  You'd think she
owned the whole corporation.  I wished I 'd t'rown her over into the
wather, so I did, before he come by at all.  'T was on the bridge the
two of us were.  I was stepping home by meself very quiet in the
afthernoon to put me tay-kittle on for supper, and herself overtook
me,--ain't she the bold thing!

"'How are you the day, Mrs. Dunl'avy?' says she, so mincin' an'
preenin', and I knew well she 'd put her mind on having words wit' me
from that minute.  I 'm one that likes to have peace in the
neighborhood, if it wa'n't for the likes of her, that makes the top of
me head lift and clat' wit' rage like a pot-lid!"

"What was the matter with the two of you?" asked a listener, with
simple interest.

"Faix indeed, 't was herself had a thrifle of melons planted the other
side of the fince," acknowledged Mrs. Dunleavy.  "She said the pumpkins
would be the ruin of them intirely.  I says, and 'twas thrue for me,
that I 'd me pumpkins planted the week before she'd dropped anny old
melon seed into the ground, and the same bein' already dwining from so
manny bugs.  Oh, but she 's blackhearted to give me the lie about it,
and say those poor things was all up, and she 'd thrown lime on 'em to
keep away their inemies when she first see me come out betune me
cabbage rows.  How well she knew what I might be doing!  Me cabbages
grows far apart and I 'd plinty of room, and if a pumpkin vine gets
attention you can entice it wherever you pl'ase and it'll grow fine and
long, while the poor cabbages ates and grows fat and round, and no harm
to annybody, but she must pick a quarrel with a quiet 'oman in the face
of every one.

"We were on the bridge, don't you see, and plinty was passing by with
their grins, and loitering and stopping afther they were behind her
back to hear what was going on betune us.  Annybody does be liking to
got the sound of loud talk an' they having nothing better to do.  Biddy
Con'ly, seeing she was well watched, got the airs of a pr'acher, and
set down whatever she might happen to be carrying and tried would she
get the better of me for the sake of their admiration.  Oh, but wa'n't
she all drabbled and wet from the roads, and the world knows meself for
a very tidy walker!

"'Clane the mud from your shoes if you 're going to dance;' 't was all
I said to her, and she being that mad she did be stepping up and down
like an old turkey-hin, and shaking her fist all the time at me.  'Coom
now, Biddy,' says I, 'what put you out so?' says I.  'Sure, it creeps
me skin when I looks at you!  Is the pig dead,' says I, 'or anny little
thing happened to you, ma'am?  Sure this is far beyond the rights of a
few pumpkin seeds that has just cleared the ground!' and all the folks
laughed.  I 'd no call to have tark with Biddy Con'ly before them idle
b'ys and gerrls, nor to let the two of us become their laughing-stock.
I tuk up me basket, being ashamed then, and I meant to go away, mad as
I was.  'Coom, Mrs. Con'ly!' says I, 'let bygones be bygones; what's
all this whillalu we 're afther having about nothing?' says I very
pleasant.

"'May the divil fly away with you, Mary Dunl'avy!' says she then,
'spoiling me garden ground, as every one can see, and full of your bold
talk.  I 'll let me hens out into it this afternoon, so I will,' says
she, and a good deal more.  'Hold off,' says I, 'and remember what fell
to your aunt one day when she sint her hins in to pick a neighbor's
piece, and while her own back was turned they all come home and had
every sprouted bean and potatie heeled out in the hot sun, and all her
fine lettuces picked into Irish lace.  We 've lived neighbors,' says I,
'thirteen years,' says I; 'and we 've often had words together above
the fince,' says I, 'but we 're neighbors yet, and we 've no call to
stand here in such spectacles and disgracing ourselves and each other.
Coom, Biddy,' says I, again, going away with me basket and remimbering
Father Brady's caution whin it was too late.  Some o' the b'ys went
off, too, thinkin' 't was all done.

"'I don't want anny o' your Coom Biddy's,' says she, stepping at me,
with a black stripe across her face, she was that destroyed with rage,
and I stepped back and held up me basket between us, she being bigger
than I, and I getting no chance, and herself slipped and fell, and her
nose got a clout with the hard edge of the basket, it would trouble the
saints to say how, and then I picked her up and wint home with her to
thry and quinch the blood.  Sure I was sorry for the crathur an' she
having such a timper boiling in her heart.

"'Look at you now, Mrs. Con'ly,' says I, kind of soft, 'you 'ont be fit
for mass these two Sundays with a black eye like this, and your face
arl scratched, and every bliguard has gone the lingth of the town to
tell tales of us.  I 'm a quiet 'oman,' says I, 'and I don't thank
you,' says I, whin the blood was stopped,--'no, I don't thank you for
disgracin' an old neighbor like me.  'T is of our prayers and the grave
we should be thinkin', and not be having bold words on the bridge.'
Wisha! but I fought I was after spaking very quiet, and up she got and
caught up the basket, and I dodged it by good luck, but after that I
walked off and left her to satisfy her foolishness with b'ating the
wall if it pl'ased her.  I 'd no call for her company anny more, and I
took a vow I 'd never spake a word to her again while the world stood.
So all is over since then betune Biddy Con'ly and me.  No, I don't look
at her at all!"



II.

Some time afterward, in late summer, Mrs. Dunleavy stood, large and
noisy, but generous-hearted, addressing some remarks from her front
doorway to a goat on the sidewalk.  He was pulling some of her
cherished foxgloves through the picket fence, and eagerly devouring
their flowery stalks.

"How well you rache through an honest fince, you black pirate!" she
shouted; but finding that harsh words had no effect, she took a
convenient broom, and advanced to strike a gallant blow upon the
creature's back.  This had the simple effect of making him step a
little to one side and modestly begin to nibble at a tuft of grass.

"Well, if I ain't plagued!" said Mrs. Dunleavy sorrowfully; "if I ain't
throubled with every wild baste, and me cow that was some use gone dry
very unexpected, and a neighbor that's worse than none at all.  I 've
nobody to have an honest word with, and the morning being so fine and
pleasant.  Faix, I'd move away from it, if there was anny place I 'd
enjoy better.  I 've no heart except for me garden, me poor little
crops is doing so well; thanks be to God, me cabbages is very fine.
There does be those that overlooked me pumpkins for the poor cow; they
're no size at all wit' so much rain."

The two small white houses stood close together, with their little
gardens behind them.  The road was just in front, and led down to a
stone bridge which crossed the river to the busy manufacturing village
beyond.  The air was fresh and cool at that early hour, the wind had
changed after a season of dry, hot weather; it was just the morning for
a good bit of gossip with a neighbor, but summer was almost done, and
the friends were not reconciled.  Their respective acquaintances had
grown tired of hearing the story of the quarrel, and the novelty of
such a pleasing excitement had long been over.  Mrs. Connelly was
thumping away at a handful of belated ironing, and Mrs. Dunleavy,
estranged and solitary, sighed as she listened to the iron.  She was
sociable by nature, and she had an impulse to go in and sit down as she
used at the end of the ironing table.

"Wisha, the poor thing is mad at me yet, I know that from the sounds of
her iron; 't was a shame for her to go picking a quarrel with the likes
of me," and Mrs. Dunleavy sighed heavily and stepped down into her
flower-plot to pull the distressed foxgloves back into their places
inside the fence.  The seed had been sent her from the old country, and
this was the first year they had come into full bloom.  She had been
hoping that the sight of them would melt Mrs. Connelly's heart into
some expression of friendliness, since they had come from adjoining
parishes in old County Kerry.  The goat lifted his head, and gazed at
his enemy with mild interest; he was pasturing now by the roadside, and
the foxgloves had proved bitter in his mouth.

Mrs. Dunleavy stood looking at him over the fence, glad of even a
goat's company.

"Go 'long there; see that fine little tuft ahead now," she advised him,
forgetful of his depredations.  "Oh, to think I 've nobody to spake to,
the day!"

At that moment a woman came in sight round the turn of the road.  She
was a stranger, a fellow country-woman, and she carried a large
newspaper bundle and a heavy handbag.  Mrs. Dunleavy stepped out of the
flower-bed toward the gate, and waited there until the stranger came up
and stopped to ask a question.

"Ann Bogan don't live here, do she?"

"She don't," answered the mistress of the house, with dignity.

"I t'ought she did n't; you don't know where she lives, do you?"

"I don't," said Mrs. Dunleavy.

"I don't know ayther; niver mind, I 'll find her; 't is a fine day,
ma'am."

Mrs. Dunleavy could hardly bear to let the stranger go away.  She
watched her far down the hill toward the bridge before she turned to go
into the house.  She seated herself by the side window next Mrs.
Connelly's, and gave herself to her thoughts.  The sound of the
flatiron had stopped when the traveler came to the gate, and it had not
begun again.  Mrs. Connelly had gone to her front door; the hem of her
calico dress could be plainly seen, and the bulge of her apron, and she
was watching the stranger quite out of sight.  She even came out to the
doorstep, and for the first time in many weeks looked with friendly
intent toward her neighbor's house.  Then she also came and sat down at
her side window.  Mrs. Dunleavy's heart began to leap with excitement.

"Bad cess to her foolishness, she does be afther wanting to come round;
I 'll not make it too aisy for her," said Mrs. Dunleavy, seizing a
piece of sewing and forbearing to look up.  "I don't know who Ann Bogan
is, annyway; perhaps herself does, having lived in it five or six years
longer than me.  Perhaps she knew this woman by her looks, and the
heart is out of her with wanting to know what she asked from me.  She
can sit there, then, and let her irons grow cold!

"There was Bogans living down by the brick mill when I first come here,
neighbors to Flaherty's folks," continued Mrs. Dunleavy, more and more
aggrieved.  "Biddy Con'ly ought to know the Flahertys, they being her
cousins.  'T was a fine loud-talking 'oman; sure Biddy might well
enough have heard her inquiring of me, and have stepped out, and said
if she knew Ann Bogan, and satisfied a poor stranger that was hunting
the town over.  No, I don't know anny one in the name of Ann Bogan, so
I don't," said Mrs. Dunleavy aloud, "and there's nobody I can ask a
civil question, with every one that ought to be me neighbors stopping
their mouths, and keeping black grudges whin 't was meself got all the
offince."

"Faix 't was meself got the whack on me nose," responded Mrs. Connelly
quite unexpectedly.  She was looking squarely at the window where Mrs.
Dunleavy sat behind the screen of blue mosquito netting.  They were
both conscious that Mrs. Connelly made a definite overture of peace.

"That one was a very civil-spoken 'oman that passed by just now,"
announced Mrs. Dunleavy, handsomely waiving the subject of the quarrel
and coming frankly to the subject of present interest.  "Faix, 't is a
poor day for Ann Bogans; she 'll find that out before she gets far in
the place."

"Ann Bogans was plinty here once, then, God rest them!  There was two
Ann Bogans, mother and daughter, lived down by Flaherty's when I first
come here.  They died in the one year, too; 't is most thirty years
ago," said Bridget Connelly, in her most friendly tone.

"'I 'll find her,' says the poor 'oman as if she 'd only to look;
indeed, she 's got the boldness," reported Mary Dunleavy, peace being
fully restored.

"'T was to Flaherty's she 'd go first, and they all moved to La'rence
twelve years ago, and all she 'll get from anny one would be the
address of the cimet'ry.  There was plenty here knowing to Ann Bogan
once.  That 'oman is one I 've seen long ago, but I can't name her yet.
Did she say who she was?" asked the neighbor.

"She did n't; I 'm sorry for the poor 'oman, too," continued Mrs.
Dunleavy, in the same spirit of friendliness.  "She 'd the expectin'
look of one who came hoping to make a nice visit and find friends, and
herself lugging a fine bundle.  She 'd the looks as if she 'd lately
come out; very decent, but old-fashioned.  Her bonnet was made at home
annyways, did ye mind?  I 'll lay it was bought in Cork when it was
new, or maybe 'twas from a good shop in Bantry or Kinmare, or some o'
those old places.  If she 'd seemed satisfied to wait, I 'd made her
the offer of a cup of tay, but off she wint with great courage."

"I don't know but I 'll slip on me bonnet in the afthernoon and go find
her," said Biddy Connelly, with hospitable warmth.  "I 've seen her
before, perhaps 't was long whiles ago at home."

"Indeed I thought of it myself," said Mrs. Dunleavy, with approval.
"We 'd best wait, perhaps, till she 'd be coming back; there's no train
now till three o'clock.  She might stop here till the five, and we 'll
find out all about her.  She 'll have a very lonesome day, whoiver she
is.  Did you see that old goat 'ating the best of me fairy-fingers that
all bloomed the day?" she asked eagerly, afraid that the conversation
might come to an end at any moment; but Mrs. Connelly took no notice of
so trivial a subject.

"Me melons is all getting ripe," she announced, with an air of
satisfaction.  "There 's a big one must be ate now while we can; it's
down in the cellar cooling itself, an' I 'd like to be dropping it,
getting down the stairs.  'Twas afther picking it I was before
breakfast, itself having begun to crack open.  Himself was the b'y that
loved a melon, an' I ain't got the heart to look at it alone.  Coom
over, will ye, Mary?"

"'Deed then an' I will," said Mrs. Dunleavy, whose face was close
against the mosquito netting.  "Them old pumpkin vines was no good anny
way; did you see how one of them had the invintion, and wint away up on
the fince entirely wit' its great flowers, an' there come a rain on
'em, and so they all blighted?  I 'd no call to grow such stramming
great things in my piece annyway, 'ating up all the goodness from me
beautiful cabbages."



III.

That afternoon the reunited friends sat banqueting together and keeping
an eye on the road.  They had so much to talk over and found each other
so agreeable that it was impossible to dwell with much regret upon the
long estrangement.  When the melon was only half finished the stranger
of the morning, with her large unopened bundle and the heavy handbag,
was seen making her way up the hill.  She wore such a weary and
disappointed look that she was accosted and invited in by both the
women, and being proved by Mrs. Connelly to be an old acquaintance, she
joined them at their feast.

"Yes, I was here seventeen years ago for the last time," she explained.
"I was working in Lawrence, and I came over and spent a fortnight with
Honora Flaherty; then I wint home that year to mind me old mother, and
she lived to past ninety.  I 'd nothing to keep me then, and I was
always homesick afther America, so back I come to it, but all me old
frinds and neighbors is changed and gone.  Faix, this is the first
welcome I 've got yet from anny one.  'Tis a beautiful welcome,
too,--I'll get me apron out of me bundle, by your l'ave, Mrs. Con'ly.
You 've a strong resemblance to Flaherty's folks, dear, being cousins.
Well, 't is a fine thing to have good neighbors.  You an' Mrs. Dunleavy
is very pleasant here so close together."

"Well, we does be having a hasty word now and then, ma'am," confessed
Mrs. Dunleavy, "but ourselves is good neighbors this manny years.  Whin
a quarrel's about nothing betune friends, it don't count for much, so
it don't."

"Most quarrels is the same way," said the stranger, who did not like
melons, but accepted a cup of hot tea.  "Sure, it always takes two to
make a quarrel, and but one to end it; that's what me mother always
told me, that never gave anny one a cross word in her life."

"'T is a beautiful melon," repeated Mrs. Dunleavy for the seventh time.
"Sure, I 'll plant a few seed myself next year; me pumpkins is no good
afther all me foolish pride wit' 'em.  Maybe the land don't suit 'em,
but glory be to God, me cabbages is the size of the house, an' you 'll
git the pick of the best, Mrs. Con'ly."

"What's melons betune friends, or cabbages ayther, that they should
ever make any trouble?" answered Mrs. Connelly handsomely, and the
great feud was forever ended.

But the stranger, innocent that she was the harbinger of peace, could
hardly understand why Bridget Connelly insisted upon her staying all
night and talking over old times, and why the two women put on their
bonnets and walked, one on either hand, to see the town with her that
evening.  As they crossed the bridge they looked at each other shyly,
and then began to laugh.

"Well, I missed it the most on Sundays going all alone to mass,"
confessed Mary Dunleavy.  "I 'm glad there's no one here seeing us go
over, so I am."

"'T was ourselves had bold words at the bridge, once, that we 've got
the laugh about now," explained Mrs. Connelly politely to the stranger.



MARTHA'S LADY.

I.

One day, many years ago, the old Judge Pyne house wore an unwonted look
of gayety and youthfulness.  The high-fenced green garden was bright
with June flowers.  Under the elms in the large shady front yard you
might see some chairs placed near together, as they often used to be
when the family were all at home and life was going on gayly with eager
talk and pleasure-making; when the elder judge, the grandfather, used
to quote that great author, Dr. Johnson, and say to his girls, "Be
brisk, be splendid, and be public."

One of the chairs had a crimson silk shawl thrown carelessly over its
straight back, and a passer-by, who looked in through the latticed gate
between the tall gate-posts with their white urns, might think that
this piece of shining East Indian color was a huge red lily that had
suddenly bloomed against the syringa bush.  There were certain windows
thrown wide open that were usually shut, and their curtains were
blowing free in the light wind of a summer afternoon; it looked as if a
large household had returned to the old house to fill the prim best
rooms and find them full of cheer.

It was evident to every one in town that Miss Harriet Pyne, to use the
village phrase, had company.  She was the last of her family, and was
by no means old; but being the last, and wonted to live with people
much older than herself, she had formed all the habits of a serious
elderly person.  Ladies of her age, something past thirty, often wore
discreet caps in those days, especially if they were married, but being
single, Miss Harriet clung to youth in this respect, making the one
concession of keeping her waving chestnut hair as smooth and stiffly
arranged as possible.  She had been the dutiful companion of her father
and mother in their latest years, all her elder brothers and sisters
having married and gone, or died and gone, out of the old house.  Now
that she was left alone it seemed quite the best thing frankly to
accept the fact of age, and to turn more resolutely than ever to the
companionship of duty and serious books.  She was more serious and
given to routine than her elders themselves, as sometimes happened when
the daughters of New England gentlefolks were brought up wholly in the
society of their elders.  At thirty-five she had more reluctance than
her mother to face an unforeseen occasion, certainly more than her
grandmother, who had preserved some cheerful inheritance of gayety and
worldliness from colonial times.

There was something about the look of the crimson silk shawl in the
front yard to make one suspect that the sober customs of the best house
in a quiet New England village were all being set at defiance, and once
when the mistress of the house came to stand in her own doorway, she
wore the pleased but somewhat apprehensive look of a guest.  In these
days New England life held the necessity of much dignity and discretion
of behavior; there was the truest hospitality and good cheer in all
occasional festivities, but it was sometimes a self-conscious
hospitality, followed by an inexorable return to asceticism both of
diet and of behavior.  Miss Harriet Pyne belonged to the very dullest
days of New England, those which perhaps held the most priggishness for
the learned professions, the most limited interpretation of the word
"evangelical," and the pettiest indifference to large things.  The
outbreak of a desire for larger religious freedom caused at first a
most determined reaction toward formalism, especially in small and
quiet villages like Ashford, intently busy with their own concerns.  It
was high time for a little leaven to begin its work, in this moment
when the great impulses of the war for liberty had died away and those
of the coming war for patriotism and a new freedom had hardly yet begun.


The dull interior, the changed life of the old house, whose former
activities seemed to have fallen sound asleep, really typified these
larger conditions, and a little leaven had made its easily recognized
appearance in the shape of a light-hearted girl.  She was Miss
Harriet's young Boston cousin, Helena Vernon, who, half-amused and
half-impatient at the unnecessary sober-mindedness of her hostess and
of Ashford in general, had set herself to the difficult task of gayety.
Cousin Harriet looked on at a succession of ingenious and, on the
whole, innocent attempts at pleasure, as she might have looked on at
the frolics of a kitten who easily substitutes a ball of yarn for the
uncertainties of a bird or a wind-blown leaf, and who may at any moment
ravel the fringe of a sacred curtain-tassel in preference to either.

Helena, with her mischievous appealing eyes, with her enchanting old
songs and her guitar, seemed the more delightful and even reasonable
because she was so kind to everybody, and because she was a beauty.
She had the gift of most charming manners.  There was all the
unconscious lovely ease and grace that had come with the good breeding
of her city home, where many pleasant people came and went; she had no
fear, one had almost said no respect, of the individual, and she did
not need to think of herself.  Cousin Harriet turned cold with
apprehension when she saw the minister coming in at the front gate, and
wondered in agony if Martha were properly attired to go to the door,
and would by any chance hear the knocker; it was Helena who, delighted
to have anything happen, ran to the door to welcome the Reverend Mr.
Crofton as if he were a congenial friend of her own age.  She could
behave with more or less propriety during the stately first visit, and
even contrive to lighten it with modest mirth, and to extort the
confession that the guest had a tenor voice, though sadly out of
practice; but when the minister departed a little flattered, and hoping
that he had not expressed himself too strongly for a pastor upon the
poems of Emerson, and feeling the unusual stir of gallantry in his
proper heart, it was Helena who caught the honored hat of the late
Judge Pyne from its last resting-place in the hall, and holding it
securely in both hands, mimicked the minister's self-conscious
entrance.  She copied his pompous and anxious expression in the dim
parlor in such delicious fashion that Miss Harriet, who could not
always extinguish a ready spark of the original sin of humor, laughed
aloud.

"My dear!" she exclaimed severely the next moment, "I am ashamed of
your being so disrespectful!" and then laughed again, and took the
affecting old hat and carried it back to its place.

"I would not have had any one else see you for the world," she said
sorrowfully as she returned, feeling quite self-possessed again, to the
parlor doorway; but Helena still sat in the minister's chair, with her
small feet placed as his stiff boots had been, and a copy of his solemn
expression before they came to speaking of Emerson and of the guitar.
"I wish I had asked him if he would be so kind as to climb the
cherry-tree," said Helena, unbending a little at the discovery that her
cousin would consent to laugh no more.  "There are all those ripe
cherries on the top branches.  I can climb as high as he, but I can't
reach far enough from the last branch that will bear me.  The minister
is so long and thin"--

"I don't know what Mr. Crofton would have thought of you; he is a very
serious young man," said cousin Harriet, still ashamed of her laughter.
"Martha will get the cherries for you, or one of the men.  I should not
like to have Mr. Crofton think you were frivolous, a young lady of your
opportunities"--but Helena had escaped through the hall and out at the
garden door at the mention of Martha's name.  Miss Harriet Pyne sighed
anxiously, and then smiled, in spite of her deep convictions, as she
shut the blinds and tried to make the house look solemn again.

The front door might be shut, but the garden door at the other end of
the broad hall was wide open upon the large sunshiny garden, where the
last of the red and white peonies and the golden lilies, and the first
of the tall blue larkspurs lent their colors in generous fashion.  The
straight box borders were all in fresh and shining green of their new
leaves, and there was a fragrance of the old garden's inmost life and
soul blowing from the honeysuckle blossoms on a long trellis.  It was
now late in the afternoon, and the sun was low behind great apple-trees
at the garden's end, which threw their shadows over the short turf of
the bleaching-green.  The cherry-trees stood at one side in full
sunshine, and Miss Harriet, who presently came to the garden steps to
watch like a hen at the water's edge, saw her cousin's pretty figure in
its white dress of India muslin hurrying across the grass.  She was
accompanied by the tall, ungainly shape of Martha the new maid, who,
dull and indifferent to every one else, showed a surprising willingness
and allegiance to the young guest.

"Martha ought to be in the dining-room, already, slow as she is; it
wants but half an hour of tea-time," said Miss Harriet, as she turned
and went into the shaded house.  It was Martha's duty to wait at table,
and there had been many trying scenes and defeated efforts toward her
education.  Martha was certainly very clumsy, and she seemed the
clumsier because she had replaced her aunt, a most skillful person, who
had but lately married a thriving farm and its prosperous owner.  It
must be confessed that Miss Harriet was a most bewildering instructor,
and that her pupil's brain was easily confused and prone to blunders.
The coming of Helena had been somewhat dreaded by reason of this
incompetent service, but the guest took no notice of frowns or futile
gestures at the first tea-table, except to establish friendly relations
with Martha on her own account by a reassuring smile.  They were about
the same age, and next morning, before cousin Harriet came down, Helena
showed by a word and a quick touch the right way to do something that
had gone wrong and been impossible to understand the night before.  A
moment later the anxious mistress came in without suspicion, but
Martha's eyes were as affectionate as a dog's, and there was a new look
of hopefulness on her face; this dreaded guest was a friend after all,
and not a foe come from proud Boston to confound her ignorance and
patient efforts.

The two young creatures, mistress and maid, were hurrying across the
bleaching-green.

"I can't reach the ripest cherries," explained Helena politely, "and I
think that Miss Pyne ought to send some to the minister.  He has just
made us a call.  Why Martha, you have n't been crying again!"

"Yes 'm," said Martha sadly.  "Miss Pyne always loves to send something
to the minister," she acknowledged with interest, as if she did not
wish to be asked to explain these latest tears.

"We 'll arrange some of the best cherries in a pretty dish.  I 'll show
you how, and you shall carry them over to the parsonage after tea,"
said Helena cheerfully, and Martha accepted the embassy with pleasure.
Life was beginning to hold moments of something like delight in the
last few days.

"You 'll spoil your pretty dress, Miss Helena," Martha gave shy
warning, and Miss Helena stood back and held up her skirts with unusual
care while the country girl, in her heavy blue checked gingham, began
to climb the cherry-tree like a boy.

Down came the scarlet fruit like bright rain into the green grass.

"Break some nice twigs with the cherries and leaves together; oh, you
're a duck, Martha!" and Martha, flushed with delight, and looking far
more like a thin and solemn blue heron, came rustling down to earth
again, and gathered the spoils into her clean apron.

That night at tea, during her hand-maiden's temporary absence, Miss
Harriet announced, as if by way of apology, that she thought Martha was
beginning to understand something about her work.  "Her aunt was a
treasure, she never had to be told anything twice; but Martha has been
as clumsy as a calf," said the precise mistress of the house.  "I have
been afraid sometimes that I never could teach her anything.  I was
quite ashamed to have you come just now, and find me so unprepared to
entertain a visitor."

"Oh, Martha will learn fast enough because she cares so much," said the
visitor eagerly.  "I think she is a dear good girl.  I do hope that she
will never go away.  I think she does things better every day, cousin
Harriet," added Helena pleadingly, with all her kind young heart.  The
china-closet door was open a little way, and Martha heard every word.
From that moment, she not only knew what love was like, but she knew
love's dear ambitions.  To have come from a stony hill-farm and a bare
small wooden house, was like a cave-dweller's coming to make a
permanent home in an art museum, such had seemed the elaborateness and
elegance of Miss Pyne's fashion of life; and Martha's simple brain was
slow enough in its processes and recognitions.  But with this
sympathetic ally and defender, this exquisite Miss Helena who believed
in her, all difficulties appeared to vanish.

Later that evening, no longer homesick or hopeless, Martha returned
from her polite errand to the minister, and stood with a sort of
triumph before the two ladies, who were sitting in the front doorway,
as if they were waiting for visitors, Helena still in her white muslin
and red ribbons, and Miss Harriet in a thin black silk.  Being happily
self-forgetful in the greatness of the moment, Martha's manners were
perfect, and she looked for once almost pretty and quite as young as
she was.

"The minister came to the door himself, and returned his thanks.  He
said that cherries were always his favorite fruit, and he was much
obliged to both Miss Pyne and Miss Vernon.  He kept me waiting a few
minutes, while he got this book ready to send to you, Miss Helena."

"What are you saying, Martha?  I have sent him nothing!" exclaimed Miss
Pyne, much astonished.  "What does she mean, Helena?"

"Only a few cherries," explained Helena.  "I thought Mr. Crofton would
like them after his afternoon of parish calls.  Martha and I arranged
them before tea, and I sent them with our compliments."

"Oh, I am very glad you did," said Miss Harriet, wondering, but much
relieved.  "I was afraid"--

"No, it was none of my mischief," answered Helena daringly.  "I did not
think that Martha would be ready to go so soon.  I should have shown
you how pretty they looked among their green leaves.  We put them in
one of your best white dishes with the openwork edge.  Martha shall
show you to-morrow; mamma always likes to have them so."  Helena's
fingers were busy with the hard knot of a parcel.

"See this, cousin Harriet!" she announced proudly, as Martha
disappeared round the corner of the house, beaming with the pleasures
of adventure and success.  "Look! the minister has sent me a book:
Sermons on _what_?  Sermons--it is so dark that I can't quite see."

"It must be his 'Sermons on the Seriousness of Life;' they are the only
ones he has printed, I believe," said Miss Harriet, with much pleasure.
"They are considered very fine discourses.  He pays you a great
compliment, my dear.  I feared that he noticed your girlish levity."

"I behaved beautifully while he stayed," insisted Helena.  "Ministers
are only men," but she blushed with pleasure.  It was certainly
something to receive a book from its author, and such a tribute made
her of more value to the whole reverent household.  The minister was
not only a man, but a bachelor, and Helena was at the age that best
loves conquest; it was at any rate comfortable to be reinstated in
cousin Harriet's good graces.

"Do ask the kind gentleman to tea!  He needs a little cheering up,"
begged the siren in India muslin, as she laid the shiny black volume of
sermons on the stone doorstep with an air of approval, but as if they
had quite finished their mission.

"Perhaps I shall, if Martha improves as much as she has within the last
day or two," Miss Harriet promised hopefully.  "It is something I
always dread a little when I am all alone, but I think Mr. Crofton
likes to come.  He converses so elegantly."



II.

These were the days of long visits, before affectionate friends thought
it quite worth while to take a hundred miles' journey merely to dine or
to pass a night in one another's houses.  Helena lingered through the
pleasant weeks of early summer, and departed unwillingly at last to
join her family at the White Hills, where they had gone, like other
households of high social station, to pass the month of August out of
town.  The happy-hearted young guest left many lamenting friends behind
her, and promised each that she would come back again next year.  She
left the minister a rejected lover, as well as the preceptor of the
academy, but with their pride unwounded, and it may have been with
wider outlooks upon the world and a less narrow sympathy both for their
own work in life and for their neighbors' work and hindrances.  Even
Miss Harriet Pyne herself had lost some of the unnecessary
provincialism and prejudice which had begun to harden a naturally good
and open mind and affectionate heart.  She was conscious of feeling
younger and more free, and not so lonely.  Nobody had ever been so gay,
so fascinating, or so kind as Helena, so full of social resource, so
simple and undemanding in her friendliness.  The light of her young
life cast no shadow on either young or old companions, her pretty
clothes never seemed to make other girls look dull or out of fashion.
When she went away up the street in Miss Harriet's carriage to take the
slow train toward Boston and the gayeties of the new Profile House,
where her mother waited impatiently with a group of Southern friends,
it seemed as if there would never be any more picnics or parties in
Ashford, and as if society had nothing left to do but to grow old and
get ready for winter.


Martha came into Miss Helena's bedroom that last morning, and it was
easy to see that she had been crying; she looked just as she did in
that first sad week of homesickness and despair.  All for love's sake
she had been learning to do many things, and to do them exactly right;
her eyes had grown quick to see the smallest chance for personal
service.  Nobody could be more humble and devoted; she looked years
older than Helena, and wore already a touching air of caretaking.

"You spoil me, you dear Martha!" said Helena from the bed.  "I don't
know what they will say at home, I am so spoiled."

Martha went on opening the blinds to let in the brightness of the
summer morning, but she did not speak.

"You are getting on splendidly, aren't you?" continued the little
mistress.  "You have tried so hard that you make me ashamed of myself.
At first you crammed all the flowers together, and now you make them
look beautiful.  Last night cousin Harriet was so pleased when the
table was so charming, and I told her that you did everything yourself,
every bit.  Won't you keep the flowers fresh and pretty in the house
until I come back?  It's so much pleasanter for Miss Pyne, and you 'll
feed my little sparrows, won't you?  They're growing so tame."

"Oh, yes, Miss Helena!" and Martha looked almost angry for a moment,
then she burst into tears and covered her face with her apron.  "I
could n't understand a single thing when I first came.  I never had
been anywhere to see anything, and Miss Pyne frightened me when she
talked.  It was you made me think I could ever learn.  I wanted to keep
the place, 'count of mother and the little boys; we 're dreadful hard
pushed.  Hepsy has been good in the kitchen; she said she ought to have
patience with me, for she was awkward herself when she first came."

Helena laughed; she looked so pretty under the tasseled white curtains.

"I dare say Hepsy tells the truth," she said.  "I wish you had told me
about your mother.  When I come again, some day we 'll drive up
country, as you call it, to see her.  Martha!  I wish you would think
of me sometimes after I go away.  Won't you promise?" and the bright
young face suddenly grew grave.  "I have hard times myself; I don't
always learn things that I ought to learn, I don't always put things
straight.  I wish you would n't forget me ever, and would just believe
in me.  I think it does help more than anything."

"I won't forget," said Martha slowly.  "I shall think of you every
day."  She spoke almost with indifference, as if she had been asked to
dust a room, but she turned aside quickly and pulled the little mat
under the hot water jug quite out of its former straightness; then she
hastened away down the long white entry, weeping as she went.



III.

To lose out of sight the friend whom one has loved and lived to please
is to lose joy out of life.  But if love is true, there comes presently
a higher joy of pleasing the ideal, that is to say, the perfect friend.
The same old happiness is lifted to a higher level.  As for Martha, the
girl who stayed behind in Ashford, nobody's life could seem duller to
those who could not understand; she was slow of step, and her eyes were
almost always downcast as if intent upon incessant toil; but they
startled you when she looked up, with their shining light.  She was
capable of the happiness of holding fast to a great sentiment, the
ineffable satisfaction of trying to please one whom she truly loved.
She never thought of trying to make other people pleased with herself;
all she lived for was to do the best she could for others, and to
conform to an ideal, which grew at last to be like a saint's vision, a
heavenly figure painted upon the sky.


On Sunday afternoons in summer, Martha sat by the window of her
chamber, a low-storied little room, which looked into the side yard and
the great branches of an elm-tree.  She never sat in the old wooden
rocking-chair except on Sundays like this; it belonged to the day of
rest and to happy meditation.  She wore her plain black dress and a
clean white apron, and held in her lap a little wooden box, with a
brass ring on top for a handle.  She was past sixty years of age and
looked even older, but there was the same look on her face that it had
sometimes worn in girlhood.  She was the same Martha; her hands were
old-looking and work-worn, but her face still shone.  It seemed like
yesterday that Helena Vernon had gone away, and it was more than forty
years.

War and peace had brought their changes and great anxieties, the face
of the earth was furrowed by floods and fire, the faces of mistress and
maid were furrowed by smiles and tears, and in the sky the stars shone
on as if nothing had happened.  The village of Ashford added a few
pages to its unexciting history, the minister preached, the people
listened; now and then a funeral crept along the street, and now and
then the bright face of a little child rose above the horizon of a
family pew.  Miss Harriet Pyne lived on in the large white house, which
gained more and more distinction because it suffered no changes, save
successive repaintings and a new railing about its stately roof.  Miss
Harriet herself had moved far beyond the uncertainties of an anxious
youth.  She had long ago made all her decisions, and settled all
necessary questions; her scheme of life was as faultless as the
miniature landscape of a Japanese garden, and as easily kept in order.
The only important change she would ever be capable of making was the
final change to another and a better world; and for that nature itself
would gently provide, and her own innocent life.

Hardly any great social event had ruffled the easy current of life
since Helena Vernon's marriage.  To this Miss Pyne had gone, stately in
appearance and carrying gifts of some old family silver which bore the
Vernon crest, but not without some protest in her heart against the
uncertainties of married life.  Helena was so equal to a happy
independence and even to the assistance of other lives grown strangely
dependent upon her quick sympathies and instinctive decisions, that it
was hard to let her sink her personality in the affairs of another.
Yet a brilliant English match was not without its attractions to an
old-fashioned gentlewoman like Miss Pyne, and Helena herself was
amazingly happy; one day there had come a letter to Ashford, in which
her very heart seemed to beat with love and self-forgetfulness, to tell
cousin Harriet of such new happiness and high hope.  "Tell Martha all
that I say about my dear Jack," wrote the eager girl; "please show my
letter to Martha, and tell her that I shall come home next summer and
bring the handsomest and best man in the world to Ashford.  I have told
him all about the dear house and the dear garden; there never was such
a lad to reach for cherries with his six-foot-two."  Miss Pyne,
wondering a little, gave the letter to Martha, who took it deliberately
and as if she wondered too, and went away to read it slowly by herself.
Martha cried over it, and felt a strange sense of loss and pain; it
hurt her heart a little to read about the cherry-picking.  Her idol
seemed to be less her own since she had become the idol of a stranger.
She never had taken such a letter in her hands before, but love at last
prevailed, since Miss Helena was happy, and she kissed the last page
where her name was written, feeling overbold, and laid the envelope on
Miss Pyne's secretary without a word.

The most generous love cannot but long for reassurance, and Martha had
the joy of being remembered.  She was not forgotten when the day of the
wedding drew near, but she never knew that Miss Helena had asked if
cousin Harriet would not bring Martha to town; she should like to have
Martha there to see her married.  "She would help about the flowers,"
wrote the happy girl; "I know she will like to come, and I 'll ask
mamma to plan to have some one take her all about Boston and make her
have a pleasant time after the hurry of the great day is over."

Cousin Harriet thought it was very kind and exactly like Helena, but
Martha would be out of her element; it was most imprudent and girlish
to have thought of such a thing.  Helena's mother would be far from
wishing for any unnecessary guest just then, in the busiest part of her
household, and it was best not to speak of the invitation.  Some day
Martha should go to Boston if she did well, but not now.  Helena did
not forget to ask if Martha had come, and was astonished by the
indifference of the answer.  It was the first thing which reminded her
that she was not a fairy princess having everything her own way in that
last day before the wedding.  She knew that Martha would have loved to
be near, for she could not help understanding in that moment of her own
happiness the love that was hidden in another heart.  Next day this
happy young princess, the bride, cut a piece of a great cake and put it
into a pretty box that had held one of her wedding presents.  With
eager voices calling her, and all her friends about her, and her
mother's face growing more and more wistful at the thought of parting,
she still lingered and ran to take one or two trifles from her
dressing-table, a little mirror and some tiny scissors that Martha
would remember, and one of the pretty handkerchiefs marked with her
maiden name.  These she put in the box too; it was half a girlish freak
and fancy, but she could not help trying to share her happiness, and
Martha's life was so plain and dull.  She whispered a message, and put
the little package into cousin Harriet's hand for Martha as she said
good-by.  She was very fond of cousin Harriet.  She smiled with a gleam
of her old fun; Martha's puzzled look and tall awkward figure seemed to
stand suddenly before her eyes, as she promised to come again to
Ashford.  Impatient voices called to Helena, her lover was at the door,
and she hurried away, leaving her old home and her girlhood gladly.  If
she had only known it, as she kissed cousin Harriet good-by, they were
never going to see each other again until they were old women.  The
first step that she took out of her father's house that day, married,
and full of hope and joy, was a step that led her away from the green
elms of Boston Common and away from her own country and those she loved
best, to a brilliant, much-varied foreign life, and to nearly all the
sorrows and nearly all the joys that the heart of one woman could hold
or know.

On Sunday afternoons Martha used to sit by the window in Ashford and
hold the wooden box which a favorite young brother, who afterward died
at sea, had made for her, and she used to take out of it the pretty
little box with a gilded cover that had held the piece of wedding-cake,
and the small scissors, and the blurred bit of a mirror in its silver
case; as for the handkerchief with the narrow lace edge, once in two or
three years she sprinkled it as if it were a flower, and spread it out
in the sun on the old bleaching-green, and sat near by in the shrubbery
to watch lest some bold robin or cherry-bird should seize it and fly
away.



IV.

Miss Harriet Pyne was often congratulated upon the good fortune of
having such a helper and friend as Martha.  As time went on this tall,
gaunt woman, always thin, always slow, gained a dignity of behavior and
simple affectionateness of look which suited the charm and dignity of
the ancient house.  She was unconsciously beautiful like a saint, like
the picturesqueness of a lonely tree which lives to shelter unnumbered
lives and to stand quietly in its place.  There was such rustic
homeliness and constancy belonging to her, such beautiful powers of
apprehension, such reticence, such gentleness for those who were
troubled or sick; all these gifts and graces Martha hid in her heart.
She never joined the church because she thought she was not good
enough, but life was such a passion and happiness of service that it
was impossible not to be devout, and she was always in her humble place
on Sundays, in the back pew next the door.  She had been educated by a
remembrance; Helena's young eyes forever looked at her reassuringly
from a gay girlish face, Helena's sweet patience in teaching her own
awkwardness could never be forgotten.

"I owe everything to Miss Helena," said Martha, half aloud, as she sat
alone by the window; she had said it to herself a thousand times.  When
she looked in the little keepsake mirror she always hoped to see some
faint reflection of Helena Vernon, but there was only her own brown old
New England face to look back at her wonderingly.

Miss Pyne went less and less often to pay visits to her friends in
Boston; there were very few friends left to come to Ashford and make
long visits in the summer, and life grew more and more monotonous.  Now
and then there came news from across the sea and messages of
remembrance, letters that were closely written on thin sheets of paper,
and that spoke of lords and ladies, of great journeys, of the death of
little children and the proud successes of boys at school, of the
wedding of Helena Dysart's only daughter; but even that had happened
years ago.  These things seemed far away and vague, as if they belonged
to a story and not to life itself; the true links with the past were
quite different.  There was the unvarying flock of ground-sparrows that
Helena had begun to feed; every morning Martha scattered crumbs for
them from the side door-steps while Miss Pyne watched from the
dining-room window, and they were counted and cherished year by year.

Miss Pyne herself had many fixed habits, but little ideality or
imagination, and so at last it was Martha who took thought for her
mistress, and gave freedom to her own good taste.  After a while,
without any one's observing the change, the every-day ways of doing
things in the house came to be the stately ways that had once belonged
only to the entertainment of guests.  Happily both mistress and maid
seized all possible chances for hospitality, yet Miss Harriet nearly
always sat alone at her exquisitely served table with its fresh
flowers, and the beautiful old china which Martha handled so lovingly
that there was no good excuse for keeping it hidden on closet shelves.
Every year when the old cherry-trees were in fruit, Martha carried the
round white old English dish with a fretwork edge, full of pointed
green leaves and scarlet cherries, to the minister, and his wife never
quite understood why every year he blushed and looked so conscious of
the pleasure, and thanked Martha as if he had received a very
particular attention.  There was no pretty suggestion toward the
pursuit of the fine art of housekeeping in Martha's limited
acquaintance with newspapers that she did not adopt; there was no
refined old custom of the Pyne housekeeping that she consented to let
go.  And every day, as she had promised, she thought of Miss
Helena,--oh, many times in every day: whether this thing would please
her, or that be likely to fall in with her fancy or ideas of fitness.
As far as was possible the rare news that reached Ashford through an
occasional letter or the talk of guests was made part of Martha's own
life, the history of her own heart.  A worn old geography often stood
open at the map of Europe on the light-stand in her room, and a little
old-fashioned gilt button, set with a bit of glass like a ruby, that
had broken and fallen from the trimming of one of Helena's dresses, was
used to mark the city of her dwelling-place.  In the changes of a
diplomatic life Martha followed her lady all about the map.  Sometimes
the button was at Paris, and sometimes at Madrid; once, to her great
anxiety, it remained long at St. Petersburg.  For such a slow scholar
Martha was not unlearned at last, since everything about life in these
foreign towns was of interest to her faithful heart.  She satisfied her
own mind as she threw crumbs to the tame sparrows; it was all part of
the same thing and for the same affectionate reasons.



V.

One Sunday afternoon in early summer Miss Harriet Pyne came hurrying
along the entry that led to Martha's room and called two or three times
before its inhabitant could reach the door.  Miss Harriet looked
unusually cheerful and excited, and she held something in her hand.
"Where are you, Martha?" she called again.  "Come quick, I have
something to tell you!"

"Here I am, Miss Pyne," said Martha, who had only stopped to put her
precious box in the drawer, and to shut the geography.

"Who do you think is coming this very night at half-past six?  We must
have everything as nice as we can; I must see Hannah at once.  Do you
remember my cousin Helena who has lived abroad so long?  Miss Helena
Vernon,--the Honorable Mrs. Dysart, she is now."

"Yes, I remember her," answered Martha, turning a little pale.

"I knew that she was in this country, and I had written to ask her to
come for a long visit," continued Miss Harriet, who did not often
explain things, even to Martha, though she was always conscientious
about the kind messages that were sent back by grateful guests.  "She
telegraphs that she means to anticipate her visit by a few days and
come to me at once.  The heat is beginning in town, I suppose.  I
daresay, having been a foreigner so long, she does not mind traveling
on Sunday.  Do you think Hannah will be prepared?  We must have tea a
little later."

"Yes, Miss Harriet," said Martha.  She wondered that she could speak as
usual, there was such a ringing in her ears.  "I shall have time to
pick some fresh strawberries; Miss Helena is so fond of our
strawberries."

"Why, I had forgotten," said Miss Pyne, a little puzzled by something
quite unusual in Martha's face.  "We must expect to find Mrs. Dysart a
good deal changed, Martha; it is a great many years since she was here;
I have not seen her since her wedding, and she has had a great deal of
trouble, poor girl.  You had better open the parlor chamber, and make
it ready before you go down."

"It is all ready," said Martha.  "I can carry some of those little
sweet-brier roses upstairs before she comes."

"Yes, you are always thoughtful," said Miss Pyne, with unwonted feeling.

Martha did not answer.  She glanced at the telegram wistfully.  She had
never really suspected before that Miss Pyne knew nothing of the love
that had been in her heart all these years; it was half a pain and half
a golden joy to keep such a secret; she could hardly bear this moment
of surprise.

Presently the news gave wings to her willing feet.  When Hannah, the
cook, who never had known Miss Helena, went to the parlor an hour later
on some errand to her old mistress, she discovered that this stranger
guest must be a very important person.  She had never seen the
tea-table look exactly as it did that night, and in the parlor itself
there were fresh blossoming boughs in the old East India jars, and
lilies in the paneled hall, and flowers everywhere, as if there were
some high festivity.

Miss Pyne sat by the window watching, in her best dress, looking
stately and calm; she seldom went out now, and it was almost time for
the carriage.  Martha was just coming in from the garden with the
strawberries, and with more flowers in her apron.  It was a bright cool
evening in June, the golden robins sang in the elms, and the sun was
going down behind the apple-trees at the foot of the garden.  The
beautiful old house stood wide open to the long-expected guest.

"I think that I shall go down to the gate," said Miss Pyne, looking at
Martha for approval, and Martha nodded and they went together slowly
down the broad front walk.

There was a sound of horses and wheels on the roadside turf: Martha
could not see at first; she stood back inside the gate behind the white
lilac-bushes as the carriage came.  Miss Pyne was there; she was
holding out both arms and taking a tired, bent little figure in black
to her heart.  "Oh, my Miss Helena is an old woman like me!" and Martha
gave a pitiful sob; she had never dreamed it would be like this; this
was the one thing she could not bear.

"Where are you, Martha?" called Miss Pyne.  "Martha will bring these
in; you have not forgotten my good Martha, Helena?"  Then Mrs. Dysart
looked up and smiled just as she used to smile in the old days.  The
young eyes were there still in the changed face, and Miss Helena had
come.


That night Martha waited in her lady's room just as she used, humble
and silent, and went through with the old unforgotten loving services.
The long years seemed like days.  At last she lingered a moment trying
to think of something else that might be done, then she was going
silently away, but Helena called her back.  She suddenly knew the whole
story and could hardly speak.

"Oh, my dear Martha!" she cried, "won't you kiss me good-night?  Oh,
Martha, have you remembered like this, all these long years!"



THE COON DOG.

I.

In the early dusk of a warm September evening the bats were flitting to
and fro, as if it were still summer, under the great elm that
overshadowed Isaac Brown's house, on the Dipford road.  Isaac Brown
himself, and his old friend and neighbor John York, were leaning
against the fence.

"Frost keeps off late, don't it?" said John York.  "I laughed when I
first heard about the circus comin'; I thought 't was so unusual late
in the season.  Turned out well, however.  Everybody I noticed was
returnin' with a palm-leaf fan.  Guess they found 'em useful under the
tent; 't was a master hot day.  I saw old lady Price with her hands
full o' those free advertisin' fans, as if she was layin' in a stock
against next summer.  Well, I expect she 'll live to enjoy 'em."

"I was right here where I 'm standin' now, and I see her as she was
goin' by this mornin'," said Isaac Brown, laughing, and settling
himself comfortably against the fence as if they had chanced upon a
welcome subject of conversation.  "I hailed her, same 's I gener'lly
do.  'Where are you bound to-day, ma'am?' says I.

"'I 'm goin' over as fur as Dipford Centre,' says she.  'I 'm goin' to
see my poor dear 'Liza Jane.  I want to 'suage her grief; her husband,
Mr. 'Bijah Topliff, has passed away.'

"'So much the better,' says I.

"'No; I never l'arnt about it till yisterday,' says she; an' she looked
up at me real kind of pleasant, and begun to laugh.

"'I hear he's left property,' says she, tryin' to pull her face down
solemn.  I give her the fifty cents she wanted to borrow to make up her
car-fare and other expenses, an' she stepped off like a girl down
tow'ds the depot.

"This afternoon, as you know, I 'd promised the boys that I 'd take 'em
over to see the menagerie, and nothin' would n't do none of us any good
but we must see the circus too; an' when we'd just got posted on one o'
the best high seats, mother she nudged me, and I looked right down
front two, three rows, an' if there wa'n't Mis' Price, spectacles an'
all, with her head right up in the air, havin' the best time you ever
see.  I laughed right out.  She had n't taken no time to see 'Liza
Jane; she wa'n't 'suagin' no grief for nobody till she 'd seen the
circus.  'There,' says I, 'I do like to have anybody keep their young
feelin's!'"

"Mis' Price come over to see our folks before breakfast," said John
York.  "Wife said she was inquirin' about the circus, but she wanted to
know first if they couldn't oblige her with a few trinkets o' mournin',
seein' as how she 'd got to pay a mournin' visit.  Wife thought 't was
a bosom-pin, or somethin' like that, but turned out she wanted the
skirt of a dress; 'most anything would do, she said."

"I thought she looked extra well startin' off," said Isaac, with an
indulgent smile.  "The Lord provides very handsome for such, I do
declare!  She ain't had no visible means o' support these ten or
fifteen years back, but she don't freeze up in winter no more than we
do."

"Nor dry up in summer," interrupted his friend; "I never did see such
an able hand to talk."

"She's good company, and she's obliging an' useful when the women folks
have their extra work progressin'," continued Isaac Brown kindly.  "'T
ain't much for a well-off neighborhood like this to support that old
chirpin' cricket.  My mother used to say she kind of helped the work
along by 'livenin' of it.  Here she comes now; must have taken the last
train, after she had supper with 'Lizy Jane.  You stay still; we 're
goin' to hear all about it."

The small, thin figure of Mrs. Price had to be hailed twice before she
could be stopped.

"I wish you a good evenin', neighbors," she said.  "I have been to the
house of mournin'."

"Find 'Liza Jane in, after the circus?" asked Isaac Brown, with equal
seriousness.  "Excellent show, was n't it, for so late in the season?"

"Oh, beautiful; it was beautiful, I declare," answered the pleased
spectator readily.  "Why, I did n't see you, nor Mis' Brown.  Yes; I
felt it best to refresh my mind an' wear a cheerful countenance.  When
I see 'Liza Jane I was able to divert her mind consid'able.  She was
glad I went.  I told her I 'd made an effort, knowin' 'twas so she had
to lose the a'ternoon.  'Bijah left property, if he did die away from
home on a foreign shore."

"You don't mean that 'Bijah Topliff 's left anything!" exclaimed John
York with interest, while Isaac Brown put both hands deep into his
pockets, and leaned back in a still more satisfactory position against
the gatepost.

"He enjoyed poor health," answered Mrs. Price, after a moment of
deliberation, as if she must take time to think.  "'Bijah never was one
that scattereth, nor yet increaseth.  'Liza Jane's got some memories o'
the past that's a good deal better than others; but he died somewheres
out in Connecticut, or so she heard, and he's left a very val'able coon
dog,--one he set a great deal by.  'Liza Jane said, last time he was to
home, he priced that dog at fifty dollars.  'There, now, 'Liza Jane,'
says I, right to her, when she told me, 'if I could git fifty dollars
for that dog, I certain' would.  Perhaps some o' the circus folks would
like to buy him; they 've taken in a stream o' money this day.'  But
'Liza Jane ain't never inclined to listen to advice.  'T is a dreadful
poor-spirited-lookin' creatur'.  I don't want no right o' dower in him,
myself."

"A good coon dog 's worth somethin', certain," said John York
handsomely.

"If he is a good coon dog," added Isaac Brown.  "I would n't have
parted with old Rover, here, for a good deal of money when he was right
in his best days; but a dog like him 's like one of the family.  Stop
an' have some supper, won't ye, Mis' Price?"--as the thin old creature
was flitting off again.  At that same moment this kind invitation was
repeated from the door of the house; and Mrs. Price turned in,
unprotesting and always sociably inclined, at the open gate.



II.

It was a month later, and a whole autumn's length colder, when the two
men were coming home from a long tramp through the woods.  They had
been making a solemn inspection of a wood-lot that they owned together,
and had now visited their landmarks and outer boundaries, and settled
the great question of cutting or not cutting some large pines.  When it
was well decided that a few years' growth would be no disadvantage to
the timber, they had eaten an excellent cold luncheon and rested from
their labors.

"I don't feel a day older 'n ever I did when I get out in the woods thi
way," announced John York, who was a prim, dusty-looking little man, a
prudent person, who had been selectman of the town at least a dozen
times.

"No more do I," agreed his companion, who was large and jovial and
open-handed, more like a lucky sea-captain than a farmer.  After
pounding a slender walnut-tree with a heavy stone, he had succeeded in
getting down a pocketful of late-hanging nuts which had escaped the
squirrels, and was now snapping them back, one by one, to a venturesome
chipmunk among some little frost-bitten beeches.  Isaac Brown had a
wonderfully pleasant way of getting on with all sorts of animals, even
men.  After a while they rose and went their way, these two companions,
stopping here and there to look at a possible woodchuck's hole, or to
strike a few hopeful blows at a hollow tree with the light axe which
Isaac had carried to blaze new marks on some of the line-trees on the
farther edge of their possessions.  Sometimes they stopped to admire
the size of an old hemlock, or to talk about thinning out the young
pines.  At last they were not very far from the entrance to the great
tract of woodland.  The yellow sunshine came slanting in much brighter
against the tall trunks, spotting them with golden light high among the
still branches.

Presently they came to a great ledge, frost-split and cracked into
mysterious crevices.

"Here's where we used to get all the coons," said John York.  "I have
n't seen a coon this great while, spite o' your courage knocking on the
trees up back here.  You know that night we got the four fat ones?  We
started 'em somewheres near here, so the dog could get after 'em when
they come out at night to go foragin'."

"Hold on, John;" and Mr. Isaac Brown got up from the log where he had
just sat down to rest, and went to the ledge, and looked carefully all
about.  When he came back he was much excited, and beckoned his friend
away, speaking in a stage whisper.

"I guess you 'll see a coon before you 're much older," he proclaimed.
"I 've thought it looked lately as if there 'd been one about my place,
and there's plenty o' signs here, right in their old haunts.  Couple o'
hens' heads an' a lot o' feathers"--

"Might be a fox," interrupted John York.

"Might be a coon," answered Mr. Isaac Brown.  "I 'm goin' to have him,
too.  I 've been lookin' at every old hollow tree I passed, but I never
thought o' this place.  We 'll come right off to-morrow night, I guess,
John, an' see if we can't get him.  'T is an extra handy place for 'em
to den; in old times the folks always called it a good place; they 've
been so sca'ce o' these late years that I 've thought little about 'em.
Nothin' I ever liked so well as a coon-hunt.  Gorry! he must be a big
old fellow, by his tracks!  See here, in this smooth dirt; just like a
baby's footmark."

"Trouble is, we lack a good dog," said John York anxiously, after he
had made an eager inspection.  "I don't know where in the world to get
one, either.  There ain't no such a dog about as your Rover, but you
've let him get spoilt; these days I don't see him leave the yard.  You
ought to keep the women folks from overfeedin' of him so.  He ought to
've lasted a good spell longer.  He's no use for huntin' now, that's
certain."

Isaac accepted the rebuke meekly.  John York was a calm man, but he now
grew very fierce under such a provocation.  Nobody likes to be hindered
in a coon-hunt.

"Oh, Rover's too old, anyway," explained the affectionate master
regretfully.  "I 've been wishing all this afternoon I 'd brought him;
but I did n't think anything about him as we came away, I 've got so
used to seeing him layin' about the yard.  'T would have been a real
treat for old Rover, if he could have kept up.  Used to be at my heels
the whole time.  He could n't follow us, anyway, up here."

"I should n't wonder if he could," insisted John, with a humorous
glance at his old friend, who was much too heavy and huge of girth for
quick transit over rough ground.  John York himself had grown lighter
as he had grown older.

"I 'll tell you one thing we could do," he hastened to suggest.  "There
's that dog of 'Bijah Topllff's.  Don't you know the old lady told us,
that day she went over to Dipford, how high he was valued?  Most o'
'Bijah's important business was done in the fall, goin' out by night,
gunning with fellows from the mills.  He was just the kind of a
worthless do-nothing that's sure to have an extra knowin' smart dog.  I
expect 'Liza Jane 's got him now.  Perhaps we could get him by
to-morrow night.  Let one o' my boys go over!"

"Why, 'Liza Jane 's come, bag an' baggage, to spend the winter with her
mother," exclaimed Isaac Brown, springing to his feet like a boy.  "I
've had it in mind to tell you two or three times this afternoon, and
then something else has flown it out of my head.  I let my John Henry
take the long-tailed wagon an' go down to the depot this mornin' to
fetch her an' her goods up.  The old lady come in early, while we were
to breakfast, and to hear her lofty talk you 'd thought 't would taken
a couple o' four-horse teams to move her.  I told John Henry he might
take that wagon and fetch up what light stuff he could, and see how
much else there was, an' then I 'd make further arrangements.  She said
'Liza Jane 'd see me well satisfied, an' rode off, pleased to death.  I
see 'em returnin' about eight, after the train was in.  They 'd got
'Liza Jane with 'em, smaller 'n ever; and there was a trunk tied up
with a rope, and a small roll o' beddin' and braided mats, and a
quilted rockin'-chair.  The old lady was holdin' on tight to a
bird-cage with nothin' in it.  Yes; an' I see the dog, too, in behind.
He appeared kind of timid.  He 's a yaller dog, but he ain't
stump-tailed.  They hauled up out front o' the house, and mother an' I
went right out; Mis' Price always expects to have notice taken.  She
was in great sperits.  Said 'Liza Jane concluded to sell off most of
her stuff rather 'n have the care of it.  She 'd told the folks that
Mis' Topliff had a beautiful sofa and a lot o' nice chairs, and two
framed pictures that would fix up the house complete, and invited us
all to come over and see 'em.  There, she seemed just as pleased
returnin' with the bird-cage.  Disappointments don't appear to trouble
her no more than a butterfly.  I kind of like the old creatur'; I don't
mean to see her want."

"They 'll let us have the dog," said John York.  "I don't know but I
'll give a quarter for him, and we 'll let 'em have a good piece o' the
coon."

"You really comin' 'way up here by night, coon-huntin'?" asked Isaac
Brown, looking reproachfully at his more agile comrade.

"I be," answered John York.

"I was dre'tful afraid you was only talking, and might back out,"
returned the cheerful heavy-weight, with a chuckle.  "Now we 've got
things all fixed, I feel more like it than ever.  I tell you there's
just boy enough left inside of me.  I 'll clean up my old gun to-morrow
mornin', and you look right after your'n.  I dare say the boys have
took good care of 'em for us, but they don't know what we do about
huntin', and we 'll bring 'em all along and show 'em a little fun."

"All right," said John York, as soberly as if they were going to look
after a piece of business for the town; and they gathered up the axe
and other light possessions, and started toward home.



III.

The two friends, whether by accident or design, came out of the woods
some distance from their own houses, but very near to the low-storied
little gray dwelling of Mrs. Price.  They crossed the pasture, and
climbed over the toppling fence at the foot of her small sandy piece of
land, and knocked at the door.  There was a light already in the
kitchen.  Mrs. Price and Eliza Jane Topliff appeared at once, eagerly
hospitable.

"Anybody sick?" asked Mrs. Price, with instant sympathy.  "Nothin'
happened, I hope?"

"Oh, no," said both the men.

"We came to talk about hiring your dog to-morrow night," explained
Isaac Brown, feeling for the moment amused at his eager errand.  "We
got on track of a coon just now, up in the woods, and we thought we 'd
give our boys a little treat.  You shall have fifty cents, an' welcome,
and a good piece o' the coon."

"Yes, Square Brown; we can let you have the dog as well as not,"
interrupted Mrs. Price, delighted to grant a favor.  "Poor departed
'Bijah, he set everything by him as a coon dog.  He always said a dog's
capital was all in his reputation."

"You 'll have to be dreadful careful an' not lose him," urged Mrs.
Topliff.  "Yes, sir; he 's a proper coon dog as ever walked the earth,
but he's terrible weak-minded about followin' 'most anybody.  'Bijah
used to travel off twelve or fourteen miles after him to git him back,
when he wa'n't able.  Somebody 'd speak to him decent, or fling a
whip-lash as they drove by, an' off he 'd canter on three legs right
after the wagon.  But 'Bijah said he wouldn't trade him for no coon dog
he ever was acquainted with.  Trouble is, coons is awful sca'ce."

"I guess he ain't out o' practice," said John York amiably; "I guess he
'll know when he strikes the coon.  Come, Isaac, we must be gittin'
along tow'ds home.  I feel like eatin' a good supper.  You tie him up
to-morrow afternoon, so we shall be sure to have him," he turned to say
to Mrs. Price, who stood smiling at the door.

"Land sakes, dear, he won't git away; you 'll find him right there
betwixt the wood-box and the stove, where he is now.  Hold the light,
'Liza Jane; they can't see their way out to the road.  I 'll fetch him
over to ye in good season," she called out, by way of farewell; "'t
will save ye third of a mile extra walk.  No, 'Liza Jane; you 'll let
me do it, if you please.  I 've got a mother's heart.  The gentlemen
will excuse us for showin' feelin'.  You 're all the child I 've got,
an' your prosperity is the same as mine."



IV.

The great night of the coon-hunt was frosty and still, with only a dim
light from the new moon.  John York and his boys, and Isaac Brown,
whose excitement was very great, set forth across the fields toward the
dark woods.  The men seemed younger and gayer than the boys.  There was
a burst of laughter when John Henry Brown and his little brother
appeared with the coon dog of the late Mr. Abijah Topliff, which had
promptly run away home again after Mrs. Price had coaxed him over in
the afternoon.  The captors had tied a string round his neck, at which
they pulled vigorously from time to time to urge him forward.  Perhaps
he found the night too cold; at any rate, he stopped short in the
frozen furrows every few minutes, lifting one foot and whining a
little.  Half a dozen times he came near to tripping up Mr. Isaac Brown
and making him fall at full length.

"Poor Tiger! poor Tiger!" said the good-natured sportsman, when
somebody said that the dog did n't act as if he were much used to being
out by night.  "He 'll be all right when he once gets track of the
coon."  But when they were fairly in the woods, Tiger's distress was
perfectly genuine.  The long rays of light from the old-fashioned
lanterns of pierced tin went wheeling round and round, making a tall
ghost of every tree, and strange shadows went darting in and out behind
the pines.  The woods were like an interminable pillared room where the
darkness made a high ceiling.  The clean frosty smell of the open
fields was changed for a warmer air, damp with the heavy odor of moss
and fallen leaves.  There was something wild and delicious in the
forest in that hour of night.  The men and boys tramped on silently in
single file, as if they followed the flickering light instead of
carrying it.  The dog fell back by instinct, as did his companions,
into the easy familiarity of forest life.  He ran beside them, and
watched eagerly as they chose a safe place to leave a coat or two and a
basket.  He seemed to be an affectionate dog, now that he had made
acquaintance with his masters.

"Seems to me he don't exactly know what he 's about," said one of the
York boys scornfully; "we must have struck that coon's track somewhere,
comin' in."

"We 'll get through talkin', an' heap up a little somethin' for a fire,
if you 'll turn to and help," said his father.  "I 've always noticed
that nobody can give so much good advice about a piece o' work as a new
hand.  When you 've treed as many coons as your Uncle Brown an' me, you
won't feel so certain.  Isaac, you be the one to take the dog up round
the ledge, there.  He 'll scent the coon quick enough then.  We 'll
'tend to this part o' the business."

"You may come too, John Henry," said the indulgent father, and they set
off together silently with the coon dog.  He followed well enough now;
his tail and ears were drooping even more than usual, but he whimpered
along as bravely as he could, much excited, at John Henry's heels, like
one of those great soldiers who are all unnerved until the battle is
well begun.

A minute later the father and son came hurrying back, breathless, and
stumbling over roots and bushes.  The fire was already lighted, and
sending a great glow higher and higher among the trees.

"He's off!  He 's struck a track!  He was off like a major!" wheezed
Mr. Isaac Brown.

"Which way 'd he go?" asked everybody.

"Right out toward the fields.  Like's not the old fellow was just
starting after more of our fowls.  I 'm glad we come early,--he can't
have got far yet.  We can't do nothin' but wait now, boys.  I 'll set
right down here."

"Soon as the coon trees, you 'll hear the dog sing, now I tell you!"
said John York, with great enthusiasm.  "That night your father an' me
got those four busters we 've told you about, they come right back here
to the ledge.  I don't know but they will now.  'T was a dreadful cold
night, I know.  We did n't get home till past three o'clock in the
mornin', either.  You remember, don't you, Isaac?"

"I do," said Isaac.  "How old Rover worked that night!  Could n't see
out of his eyes, nor hardly wag his clever old tail, for two days;
thorns in both his fore paws, and the last coon took a piece right out
of his off shoulder."

"Why did n't you let Rover come tonight, father?" asked the younger
boy.  "I think he knew somethin' was up.  He was jumpin' round at a
great rate when I come out of the yard."

"I did n't know but he might make trouble for the other dog," answered
Isaac, after a moment's silence.  He felt almost disloyal to the
faithful creature, and had been missing him all the way.  "'Sh! there's
a bark!"  And they all stopped to listen.

The fire was leaping higher; they all sat near it, listening and
talking by turns.  There is apt to be a good deal of waiting in a
coon-hunt.

"If Rover was young as he used to be, I'd resk him to tree any coon
that ever run," said the regretful master.  "This smart creature o'
Topliff's can't beat him, I know.  The poor old fellow's eyesight seems
to be going.  Two--three times he's run out at me right in broad day,
an' barked when I come up the yard toward the house, and I did pity him
dreadfully; he was so 'shamed when he found out what he 'd done.
Rover's a dog that's got an awful lot o' pride.  He went right off out
behind the long barn the last time, and would n't come in for nobody
when they called him to supper till I went out myself and made it up
with him.  No; he can't see very well now, Rover can't."

"He 's heavy, too; he 's got too unwieldy to tackle a smart coon, I
expect, even if he could do the tall runnin'," said John York, with
sympathy.  "They have to get a master grip with their teeth through a
coon's thick pelt this time o' year.  No; the young folks gets all the
good chances after a while;" and he looked round indulgently at the
chubby faces of his boys, who fed the fire, and rejoiced in being
promoted to the society of their elders on equal terms.  "Ain't it time
we heard from the dog?"  And they all listened, while the fire snapped
and the sap whistled in some green sticks.

"I hear him," said John Henry suddenly; and faint and far away there
came the sound of a desperate bark.  There is a bark that means attack,
and there is a bark that means only foolish excitement.

"They ain't far off!" said Isaac.  "My gracious, he's right after him!
I don't know's I expected that poor-looking dog to be so smart.  You
can't tell by their looks.  Quick as he scented the game up here in the
rocks, off he put.  Perhaps it ain't any matter if they ain't
stump-tailed, long's they 're yaller dogs.  He did n't look heavy
enough to me.  I tell you, he means business.  Hear that bark!"

"They all bark alike after a coon."  John York was as excited as
anybody.  "Git the guns laid out to hand, boys; I told you we 'd ought
to follow!" he commanded.  "If it's the old fellow that belongs here,
he may put in any minute."  But there was again a long silence and
state of suspense; the chase had turned another way.  There were faint
distant yaps.  The fire burned low and fell together with a shower of
sparks.  The smaller boys began to grow chilly and sleepy, when there
was a thud and rustle and snapping of twigs close at hand, then the
gasp of a breathless dog.  Two dim shapes rushed by; a shower of bark
fell, and a dog began to sing at the foot of the great twisted pine not
fifty feet away.

"Hooray for Tiger!" yelled the boys; but the dog's voice filled all the
woods.  It might have echoed to the mountain-tops.  There was the old
coon; they could all see him half-way up the tree, flat to the great
limb.  They heaped the fire with dry branches till it flared high.  Now
they lost him in a shadow as he twisted about the tree.  John York
fired, and Isaac Brown fired, and the boys took a turn at the guns,
while John Henry started to climb a neighboring oak; but at last it was
Isaac who brought the coon to ground with a lucky shot, and the dog
stopped his deafening bark and frantic leaping in the underbrush, and
after an astonishing moment of silence crept out, a proud victor, to
his prouder master's feet.

"Goodness alive, who 's this?  Good for you, old handsome!  Why, I 'll
be hanged if it ain't old Rover, boys; _it's old Rover_!"  But Isaac
could not speak another word.  They all crowded round the wistful,
clumsy old dog, whose eyes shone bright, though his breath was all
gone.  Each man patted him, and praised him, and said they ought to
have mistrusted all the time that it could be nobody but he.  It was
some minutes before Isaac Brown could trust himself to do anything but
pat the sleek old head that was always ready to his hand.

"He must have overheard us talkin'; I guess he 'd have come if he 'd
dropped dead half-way," proclaimed John Henry, like a prince of the
reigning house; and Rover wagged his tail as if in honest assent, as he
lay at his master's side.  They sat together, while the fire was
brightened again to make a good light for the coon-hunt supper; and
Rover had a good half of everything that found its way into his
master's hand.  It was toward midnight when the triumphal procession
set forth toward home, with the two lanterns, across the fields.



V.

The next morning was bright and warm after the hard frost of the night
before.  Old Rover was asleep on the doorstep in the sun, and his
master stood in the yard, and saw neighbor Price come along the road in
her best array, with a gay holiday air.

"Well, now," she said eagerly, "you wa'n't out very late last night,
was you?  I got up myself to let Tiger in.  He come home, all beat out,
about a quarter past nine.  I expect you had n't no kind o' trouble
gittin' the coon.  The boys was tellin' me he weighed 'most thirty
pounds."

"Oh, no kind o' trouble," said Isaac, keeping the great secret
gallantly.  "You got the things I sent over this mornin'?"

"Bless your heart, yes!  I 'd a sight rather have all that good pork
an' potatoes than any o' your wild meat," said Mrs. Price, smiling with
prosperity.  "You see, now, 'Liza Jane she 's given in.  She did n't
re'lly know but 't was all talk of 'Bijah 'bout that dog's bein' wuth
fifty dollars.  She says she can't cope with a huntin' dog same 's he
could, an' she 's given me the money you an' John York sent over this
mornin'; an' I did n't know but what you 'd lend me another half a
dollar, so I could both go to Dipford Centre an' return, an' see if I
could n't make a sale o' Tiger right over there where they all know
about him.  It's right in the coon season; now 's my time, ain't it?"

"Well, gettin' a little late," said Isaac, shaking with laughter as he
took the desired sum of money out of his pocket.  "He seems to be a
clever dog round the house."

"I don't know 's I want to harbor him all winter," answered the
excursionist frankly, striking into a good traveling gait as she
started off toward the railroad station.



AUNT CYNTHY DALLETT.

I.

"No," said Mrs. Hand, speaking wistfully,--"no, we never were in the
habit of keeping Christmas at our house.  Mother died when we were all
young; she would have been the one to keep up with all new ideas, but
father and grandmother were old-fashioned folks, and--well, you know
how 't was then, Miss Pendexter: nobody took much notice of the day
except to wish you a Merry Christmas."

"They did n't do much to make it merry, certain," answered Miss
Pendexter.  "Sometimes nowadays I hear folks complainin' o' bein'
overtaxed with all the Christmas work they have to do."

"Well, others think that it makes a lovely chance for all that really
enjoys givin'; you get an opportunity to speak your kind feelin' right
out," answered Mrs. Hand, with a bright smile.  "But there!  I shall
always keep New Year's Day, too; it won't do no hurt to have an extra
day kept an' made pleasant.  And there 'a many of the real old folks
have got pretty things to remember about New Year's Day."

"Aunt Cynthy Dallett 's just one of 'em," said Miss Pendexter.  "She 's
always very reproachful if I don't get up to see her.  Last year I
missed it, on account of a light fall o' snow that seemed to make the
walkin' too bad, an' she sent a neighbor's boy 'way down from the
mount'in to see if I was sick.  Her lameness confines her to the house
altogether now, an' I have her on my mind a good deal.  How anybody
does get thinkin' of those that lives alone, as they get older!  I
waked up only last night with a start, thinkin' if Aunt Cynthy's house
should get afire or anything, what she would do, 'way up there all
alone.  I was half dreamin', I s'pose, but I could n't seem to settle
down until I got up an' went upstairs to the north garret window to see
if I could see any light; but the mountains was all dark an' safe, same
's usual.  I remember noticin' last time I was there that her chimney
needed pointin', and I spoke to her about it,--the bricks looked poor
in some places."

"Can you see the house from your north gable window?" asked Mrs. Hand,
a little absently.

"Yes 'm; it's a great comfort that I can," answered her companion.  "I
have often wished we were near enough to have her make me some sort o'
signal in case she needed help.  I used to plead with her to come down
and spend the winters with me, but she told me one day I might as well
try to fetch down one o' the old hemlocks, an' I believe 't was true."

"Your aunt Dallett is a very self-contained person," observed Mrs. Hand.

"Oh, very!" exclaimed the elderly niece, with a pleased look.  "Aunt
Cynthy laughs, an' says she expects the time will come when age 'll
compel her to have me move up an' take care of her; and last time I was
there she looked up real funny, an' says, 'I do' know, Abby; I 'm most
afeard sometimes that I feel myself beginnin' to look for'ard to it!'
'T was a good deal, comin' from Aunt Cynthy, an' I so esteemed it."

"She ought to have you there now," said Mrs. Hand.  "You 'd both make a
savin' by doin' it; but I don't expect she needs to save as much as
some.  There!  I know just how you both feel.  I like to have my own
home an' do everything just my way too."  And the friends laughed, and
looked at each other affectionately.

"There was old Mr. Nathan Dunn,--left no debts an' no money when he
died," said Mrs. Hand.  "'T was over to his niece's last summer.  He
had a little money in his wallet, an' when the bill for funeral
expenses come in there was just exactly enough; some item or other made
it come to so many dollars an' eighty-four cents, and, lo an' behold!
there was eighty-four cents in a little separate pocket beside the neat
fold o' bills, as if the old gentleman had known before-hand.  His
niece could n't help laughin', to save her; she said the old gentleman
died as methodical as he lived.  She did n't expect he had any money,
an' was prepared to pay for everything herself; she 's very well off."

"'T was funny, certain," said Miss Pendexter.  "I expect he felt
comfortable, knowin' he had that money by him.  'T is a comfort, when
all's said and done, 'specially to folks that's gettin' old."

A sad look shadowed her face for an instant, and then she smiled and
rose to take leave, looking expectantly at her hostess to see if there
were anything more to be said.

"I hope to come out square myself," she said, by way of farewell
pleasantry; "but there are times when I feel doubtful."

Mrs. Hand was evidently considering something, and waited a moment or
two before she spoke.  "Suppose we both walk up to see your aunt
Dallett, New Year's Day, if it ain't too windy and the snow keeps off?"
she proposed.  "I could n't rise the hill if 't was a windy day.  We
could take a hearty breakfast an' start in good season; I 'd rather
walk than ride, the road's so rough this time o' year."

"Oh, what a person you are to think o' things!  I did so dread goin'
'way up there all alone," said Abby Pendexter.  "I 'm no hand to go off
alone, an' I had it before me, so I really got to dread it.  I do so
enjoy it after I get there, seein' Aunt Cynthy, an' she 's always so
much better than I expect to find her."

"Well, we 'll start early," said Mrs. Hand cheerfully; and so they
parted.  As Miss Pendexter went down the foot-path to the gate, she
sent grateful thoughts back to the little sitting-room she had just
left.

"How doors are opened!" she exclaimed to herself.  "Here I 've been so
poor an' distressed at beginnin' the year with nothin', as it were,
that I could n't think o' even goin' to make poor old Aunt Cynthy a
friendly call.  I 'll manage to make some kind of a little pleasure
too, an' somethin' for dear Mis' Hand.  'Use what you 've got,' mother
always used to say when every sort of an emergency come up, an' I may
only have wishes to give, but I 'll make 'em good ones!"



II.

The first day of the year was clear and bright, as if it were a New
Year's pattern of what winter can be at its very best.  The two friends
were prepared for changes of weather, and met each other well wrapped
in their winter cloaks and shawls, with sufficient brown barége veils
tied securely over their bonnets.  They ignored for some time the plain
truth that each carried something under her arm; the shawls were
rounded out suspiciously, especially Miss Pendexter's, but each
respected the other's air of secrecy.  The narrow road was frozen in
deep ruts, but a smooth-trodden little foot-path that ran along its
edge was very inviting to the wayfarers.  Mrs. Hand walked first and
Miss Pendexter followed, and they were talking busily nearly all the
way, so that they had to stop for breath now and then at the tops of
the little hills.  It was not a hard walk; there were a good many
almost level stretches through the woods, in spite of the fact that
they should be a very great deal higher when they reached Mrs.
Dallett's door.

"I do declare, what a nice day 't is, an' such pretty footin'!" said
Mrs. Hand, with satisfaction.  "Seems to me as if my feet went o'
themselves; gener'lly I have to toil so when I walk that I can't enjoy
nothin' when I get to a place."

"It's partly this beautiful bracin' air," said Abby Pendexter.
"Sometimes such nice air comes just before a fall of snow.  Don't it
seem to make anybody feel young again and to take all your troubles
away?"

Mrs. Hand was a comfortable, well-to-do soul, who seldom worried about
anything, but something in her companion's tone touched her heart, and
she glanced sidewise and saw a pained look in Abby Pendexter's thin
face.  It was a moment for confidence.

"Why, you speak as if something distressed your mind, Abby," said the
elder woman kindly.

"I ain't one that has myself on my mind as a usual thing, but it does
seem now as if I was goin' to have it very hard," said Abby.  "Well, I
've been anxious before."

"Is it anything wrong about your property?" Mrs. Hand ventured to ask.

"Only that I ain't got any," answered.  Abby, trying to speak gayly.
"'T was all I could do to pay my last quarter's rent, twelve dollars.
I sold my hens, all but this one that had run away at the time, an' now
I 'm carryin' her up to Aunt Cynthy, roasted just as nice as I know
how."

"I thought you was carrying somethin'," said Mrs. Hand, in her usual
tone.  "For me, I 've got a couple o' my mince pies.  I thought the old
lady might like 'em; one we can eat for our dinner, and one she shall
have to keep.  But were n't you unwise to sacrifice your poultry, Abby?
You always need eggs, and hens don't cost much to keep."

"Why, yes, I shall miss 'em," said Abby; "but, you see, I had to do
every way to get my rent-money.  Now the shop 's shut down I have n't
got any way of earnin' anything, and I spent what little I 've saved
through the summer."

"Your aunt Cynthy ought to know it an' ought to help you," said Mrs.
Hand.  "You 're a real foolish person, I must say.  I expect you do for
her when she ought to do for you."

"She 's old, an' she 's all the near relation I 've got," said the
little woman.  "I 've always felt the time would come when she 'd need
me, but it's been her great pleasure to live alone an' feel free.  I
shall get along somehow, but I shall have it hard.  Somebody may want
help for a spell this winter, but I 'm afraid I shall have to give up
my house.  'T ain't as if I owned it.  I don't know just what to do,
but there'll be a way."

Mrs. Hand shifted her two pies to the other arm, and stepped across to
the other side of the road where the ground looked a little smoother.

"No, I wouldn't worry if I was you, Abby," she said.  "There, I suppose
if 't was me I should worry a good deal more!  I expect I should lay
awake nights."  But Abby answered nothing, and they came to a steep
place in the road and found another subject for conversation at the top.

"Your aunt don't know we 're coming?" asked the chief guest of the
occasion.

"Oh, no, I never send her word," said Miss Pendexter.  "She 'd be so
desirous to get everything ready, just as she used to."

"She never seemed to make any trouble o' havin' company; she always
appeared so easy and pleasant, and let you set with her while she made
her preparations," said Mrs. Hand, with great approval.  "Some has such
a dreadful way of making you feel inopportune, and you can't always
send word you 're comin'.  I did have a visit once that's always been a
lesson to me; 't was years ago; I don't know 's I ever told you?"

"I don't believe you ever did," responded the listener to this somewhat
indefinite prelude.

"Well, 't was one hot summer afternoon.  I set forth an' took a great
long walk 'way over to Mis' Eben Fulham's, on the crossroad between the
cranberry ma'sh and Staples's Corner.  The doctor was drivin' that way,
an' he give me a lift that shortened it some at the last; but I never
should have started, if I 'd known 't was so far.  I had been promisin'
all summer to go, and every time I saw Mis' Fulham, Sundays, she 'd say
somethin' about it.  We wa'n't very well acquainted, but always
friendly.  She moved here from Bedford Hill."

"Oh, yes; I used to know her," said Abby, with interest.

"Well, now, she did give me a beautiful welcome when I got there,"
continued Mrs. Hand.  "'T was about four o'clock in the afternoon, an'
I told her I 'd come to accept her invitation if 't was convenient, an'
the doctor had been called several miles beyond and expected to be
detained, but he was goin' to pick me up as he returned about seven; 't
was very kind of him.  She took me right in, and she did appear so
pleased, an' I must go right into the best room where 't was cool, and
then she said she 'd have tea early, and I should have to excuse her a
short time.  I asked her not to make any difference, and if I could n't
assist her; but she said no, I must just take her as I found her; and
she give me a large fan, and off she went.

"There.  I was glad to be still and rest where 't was cool, an' I set
there in the rockin'-chair an' enjoyed it for a while, an' I heard her
clacking at the oven door out beyond, an' gittin' out some dishes.  She
was a brisk-actin' little woman, an' I thought I 'd caution her when
she come back not to make up a great fire, only for a cup o' tea,
perhaps.  I started to go right out in the kitchen, an' then somethin'
told me I 'd better not, we never 'd been so free together as that; I
did n't know how she 'd take it, an' there I set an' set.  'T was sort
of a greenish light in the best room, an' it begun to feel a little
damp to me,--the s'rubs outside grew close up to the windows.  Oh, it
did seem dreadful long!  I could hear her busy with the dishes an'
beatin' eggs an' stirrin', an' I knew she was puttin' herself out to
get up a great supper, and I kind o' fidgeted about a little an' even
stepped to the door, but I thought she 'd expect me to remain where I
was.  I saw everything in that room forty times over, an' I did divert
myself killin' off a brood o' moths that was in a worsted-work mat on
the table.  It all fell to pieces.  I never saw such a sight o' moths
to once.  But occupation failed after that, an' I begun to feel sort o'
tired an' numb.  There was one o' them late crickets got into the room
an' begun to chirp, an' it sounded kind o' fallish.  I could n't help
sayin' to myself that Mis' Fulham had forgot all about my bein' there.
I thought of all the beauties of hospitality that ever I see!"--

"Did n't she ever come back at all, not whilst things was in the oven,
nor nothin'?" inquired Miss Pendexter, with awe.

"I never see her again till she come beamin' to the parlor door an'
invited me to walk out to tea," said Mrs. Hand.  "'T was 'most a
quarter past six by the clock; I thought 't was seven.  I 'd thought o'
everything, an' I 'd counted, an' I 'd trotted my foot, an' I 'd looked
more 'n twenty times to see if there was any more moth-millers."

"I s'pose you did have a very nice tea?" suggested Abby, with interest.

"Oh, a beautiful tea!  She could n't have done more if I 'd been the
Queen," said Mrs. Hand.  "I don't know how she could ever have done it
all in the time, I 'm sure.  The table was loaded down; there was
cup-custards and custard pie, an' cream pie, an' two kinds o' hot
biscuits, an' black tea as well as green, an' elegant cake,--one kind
she 'd just made new, and called it quick cake; I 've often made it
since--an' she 'd opened her best preserves, two kinds.  We set down
together, an' I 'm sure I appreciated what she 'd done; but 't wa'n't
no time for real conversation whilst we was to the table, and before we
got quite through the doctor come hurryin' along, an' I had to leave.
He asked us if we 'd had a good talk, as we come out, an' I could n't
help laughing to myself; but she said quite hearty that she 'd had a
nice visit from me.  She appeared well satisfied, Mis' Fulham did; but
for me, I was disappointed; an' early that fall she died."

Abby Pendexter was laughing like a girl; the speaker's tone had grown
more and more complaining.  "I do call that a funny experience," she
said.  "'Better a dinner o' herbs.'  I guess that text must ha' risen
to your mind in connection.  You must tell that to Aunt Cynthy, if
conversation seems to fail."  And she laughed again, but Mrs. Hand
still looked solemn and reproachful.

"Here we are; there 's Aunt Cynthy's lane right ahead, there by the
great yellow birch," said Abby.  "I must say, you 've made the way seem
very short, Mis' Hand."



III.

Old Aunt Cynthia Dallett sat in her high-backed rocking-chair by the
little north window, which was her favorite dwelling-place.

"New Year's Day again," she said, aloud,--"New Year's Day again!"  And
she folded her old bent hands, and looked out at the great woodland
view and the hills without really seeing them, she was lost in so deep
a reverie.  "I 'm gittin' to be very old," she added, after a little
while.

It was perfectly still in the small gray house.  Outside in the
apple-trees there were some blue-jays flitting about and calling
noisily, like schoolboys fighting at their games.  The kitchen was full
of pale winter sunshine.  It was more like late October than the first
of January, and the plain little room seemed to smile back into the
sun's face.  The outer door was standing open into the green dooryard,
and a fat small dog lay asleep on the step.  A capacious cupboard stood
behind Mrs. Dallett's chair and kept the wind away from her corner.
Its doors and drawers were painted a clean lead-color, and there were
places round the knobs and buttons where the touch of hands had worn
deep into the wood.  Every braided rug was straight on the floor.  The
square clock on its shelf between the front windows looked as if it had
just had its face washed and been wound up for a whole year to come.
If Mrs. Dallett turned her head she could look into the bedroom, where
her plump feather bed was covered with its dark blue homespun winter
quilt.  It was all very peaceful and comfortable, but it was very
lonely.  By her side, on a light-stand, lay the religious newspaper of
her denomination, and a pair of spectacles whose jointed silver bows
looked like a funny two-legged beetle cast helplessly upon its back.

"New Year's Day again," said old Cynthia Dallett.  Time had left nobody
in her house to wish her a Happy New Year,--she was the last one left
in the old nest.  "I 'm gittin' to be very old," she said for the
second time; it seemed to be all there was to say.

She was keeping a careful eye on her friendly clock, but it was hardly
past the middle of the morning, and there was no excuse for moving; it
was the long hour between the end of her slow morning work and the
appointed time for beginning to get dinner.  She was so stiff and lame
that this hour's rest was usually most welcome, but to-day she sat as
if it were Sunday, and did not take up her old shallow splint basket of
braiding-rags from the side of her footstool.

"I do hope Abby Pendexter 'll make out to git up to see me this
afternoon as usual," she continued.  "I know 't ain't so easy for her
to get up the hill as it used to be, but I do seem to want to see some
o' my own folks.  I wish 't I 'd thought to send her word I expected
her when Jabez Hooper went back after he came up here with the flour.
I 'd like to have had her come prepared to stop two or three days."

A little chickadee perched on the window-sill outside and bobbed his
head sideways to look in, and then pecked impatiently at the glass.
The old woman laughed at him with childish pleasure and felt
companioned; it was pleasant at that moment to see the life in even a
bird's bright eye.

"Sign of a stranger," she said, as he whisked his wings and flew away
in a hurry.  "I must throw out some crumbs for 'em; it's getting to be
hard pickin' for the stayin'-birds."  She looked past the trees of her
little orchard now with seeing eyes, and followed the long forest
slopes that led downward to the lowland country.  She could see the two
white steeples of Fairfield Village, and the map of fields and pastures
along the valley beyond, and the great hills across the valley to the
westward.  The scattered houses looked like toys that had been
scattered by children.  She knew their lights by night, and watched the
smoke of their chimneys by day.  Far to the northward were higher
mountains, and these were already white with snow.  Winter was already
in sight, but to-day the wind was in the south, and the snow seemed
only part of a great picture.

"I do hope the cold 'll keep off a while longer," thought Mrs. Dallett.
"I don't know how I 'm going to get along after the deep snow comes."

The little dog suddenly waked, as if he had had a bad dream, and after
giving a few anxious whines he began to bark outrageously.  His
mistress tried, as usual, to appeal to his better feelings.

"'T ain't nobody, Tiger," she said.  "Can't you have some patience?
Maybe it's some foolish boys that's rangin' about with their guns."
But Tiger kept on, and even took the trouble to waddle in on his short
legs, barking all the way.  He looked warningly at her, and then turned
and ran out again.  Then she saw him go hurrying down to the bars, as
if it were an occasion of unusual interest.

"I guess somebody is comin'; he don't act as if 't were a vagrant kind
o' noise; must really be somebody in our lane."  And Mrs. Dallett
smoothed her apron and gave an anxious housekeeper's glance round the
kitchen.  None of her state visitors, the minister or the deacons, ever
came in the morning.  Country people are usually too busy to go
visiting in the forenoons.

Presently two figures appeared where the road came out of the
woods,--the two women already known to the story, but very surprising
to Mrs. Dallett; the short, thin one was easily recognized as Abby
Pendexter, and the taller, stout one was soon discovered to be Mrs.
Hand.  Their old friend's heart was in a glow.  As the guests
approached they could see her pale face with its thin white hair framed
under the close black silk handkerchief.

"There she is at her window smilin' away!" exclaimed Mrs. Hand; but by
the time they reached the doorstep she stood waiting to meet them.

"Why, you two dear creatur's!" she said, with a beaming smile.  "I
don't know when I 've ever been so glad to see folks comin'.  I had a
kind of left-all-alone feelin' this mornin', an' I didn't even make
bold to be certain o' you, Abby, though it looked so pleasant.  Come
right in an' set down.  You 're all out o' breath, ain't you, Mis'
Hand?"

Mrs. Dallett led the way with eager hospitality.  She was the tiniest
little bent old creature, her handkerchiefed head was quick and alert,
and her eyes were bright with excitement and feeling, but the rest of
her was much the worse for age; she could hardly move, poor soul, as if
she had only a make-believe framework of a body under a shoulder-shawl
and thick petticoats.  She got back to her chair again, and the guests
took off their bonnets in the bedroom, and returned discreet and sedate
in their black woolen dresses.  The lonely kitchen was blest with
society at last, to its mistress's heart's content.  They talked as
fast as possible about the weather, and how warm it had been walking up
the mountain, and how cold it had been a year ago, that day when Abby
Pendexter had been kept at home by a snowstorm and missed her visit.
"And I ain't seen you now, aunt, since the twenty-eighth of September,
but I 've thought of you a great deal, and looked forward to comin'
more'n usual," she ended, with an affectionate glance at the pleased
old face by the window.

"I 've been wantin' to see you, dear, and wonderin' how you was gettin'
on," said Aunt Cynthy kindly.  "And I take it as a great attention to
have you come to-day, Mis' Hand," she added, turning again towards the
more distinguished guest.  "We have to put one thing against another.
I should hate dreadfully to live anywhere except on a high hill farm,
'cordin' as I was born an' raised.  But there ain't the chance to
neighbor that townfolks has, an' I do seem to have more lonely hours
than I used to when I was younger.  I don't know but I shall soon be
gittin' too old to live alone."  And she turned to her niece with an
expectant, lovely look, and Abby smiled back.

"I often wish I could run in an' see you every day, aunt," she
answered.  "I have been sayin' so to Mrs. Hand."

"There, how anybody does relish company when they don't have but a
little of it!" exclaimed Aunt Cynthia.  "I am all alone to-day; there
is going to be a shootin'-match somewhere the other side o' the
mountain, an' Johnny Foss, that does my chores, begged off to go when
he brought the milk unusual early this mornin'.  Gener'lly he 's about
here all the fore part of the day; but he don't go off with the boys
very often, and I like to have him have a little sport; 't was New
Year's Day, anyway; he 's a good, stiddy boy for my wants."

"Why, I wish you Happy New Year, aunt!" said Abby, springing up with
unusual spirit.  "Why, that's just what we come to say, and we like to
have forgot all about it!"  She kissed her aunt, and stood a minute
holding her hand with a soft, affectionate touch.  Mrs. Hand rose and
kissed Mrs. Dallett too, and it was a moment of ceremony and deep
feeling.

"I always like to keep the day," said the old hostess, as they seated
themselves and drew their splint-bottomed chairs a little nearer
together than before.  "You see, I was brought up to it, and father
made a good deal of it; he said he liked to make it pleasant and give
the year a fair start.  I can see him now, how he used to be standing
there by the fireplace when we came out o' the two bedrooms early in
the morning, an' he always made out, poor's he was, to give us some
little present, and he 'd heap 'em up on the corner o' the mantelpiece,
an' we 'd stand front of him in a row, and mother be bustling about
gettin' breakfast.  One year he give me a beautiful copy o' the 'Life
o' General Lafayette,' in a green cover,--I 've got it now, but we
child'n 'bout read it to pieces,--an' one year a nice piece o' blue
ribbon, an' Abby--that was your mother, Abby--had a pink one.  Father
was real kind to his child'n.  I thought o' them early days when I
first waked up this mornin', and I could n't help lookin' up then to
the corner o' the shelf just as I used to look."

"There's nothin' so beautiful as to have a bright childhood to look
back to," said Mrs. Hand.  "Sometimes I think child'n has too hard a
time now,--all the responsibility is put on to 'em, since they take the
lead o' what to do an' what they want, and get to be so toppin' an'
knowin'.  'Twas happier in the old days, when the fathers an' mothers
done the rulin'."

"They say things have changed," said Aunt Cynthy; "but staying right
here, I don't know much of any world but my own world."

Abby Pendexter did not join in this conversation, but sat in her
straight backed chair with folded hands and the air of a good child.
The little old dog had followed her in, and now lay sound asleep again
at her feet.  The front breadth of her black dress looked rusty and old
in the sunshine that slanted across it, and the aunt's sharp eyes saw
this and saw the careful darns.  Abby was as neat as wax, but she
looked as if the frost had struck her.  "I declare, she's gittin' along
in years," thought Aunt Cynthia compassionately.  "She begins to look
sort o' set and dried up, Abby does.  She ought n't to live all alone;
she's one that needs company."

At this moment Abby looked up with new interest.  "Now, aunt," she
said, in her pleasant voice, "I don't want you to forget to tell me if
there ain't some sewin' or mendin' I can do whilst I 'm here.  I know
your hands trouble you some, an' I may's well tell you we 're bent on
stayin' all day an' makin' a good visit, Mis' Hand an' me."

"Thank ye kindly," said the old woman; "I do want a little sewin' done
before long, but 't ain't no use to spile a good holiday."  Her face
took a resolved expression.  "I 'm goin' to make other arrangements,"
she said.  "No, you need n't come up here to pass New Year's Day an' be
put right down to sewin'.  I make out to do what mendin' I need, an' to
sew on my hooks an' eyes.  I get Johnny Ross to thread me up a good lot
o' needles every little while, an' that helps me a good deal.  Abby,
why can't you step into the best room an' bring out the rockin'-chair?
I seem to want Mis' Hand to have it."

"I opened the window to let the sun in awhile," said the niece, as she
returned.  "It felt cool in there an' shut up."

"I thought of doin' it not long before you come," said Mrs. Dallett,
looking gratified.  Once the taking of such a liberty would have been
very provoking to her.  "Why, it does seem good to have somebody think
o' things an' take right hold like that!"

"I 'm sure you would, if you were down at my house," said Abby,
blushing.  "Aunt Cynthy, I don't suppose you could feel as if 't would
be best to come down an' pass the winter with me,--just durin' the cold
weather, I mean.  You 'd see more folks to amuse you, an'--I do think
of you so anxious these long winter nights."

There was a terrible silence in the room, and Miss Pendexter felt her
heart begin to beat very fast.  She did not dare to look at her aunt at
first.

Presently the silence was broken.  Aunt Cynthia had been gazing out of
the window, and she turned towards them a little paler and older than
before, and smiling sadly.

"Well, dear, I 'll do just as you say," she answered.  "I 'm beat by
age at last, but I 've had my own way for eighty-five years, come the
month o' March, an' last winter I did use to lay awake an' worry in the
long storms.  I 'm kind o' humble now about livin' alone to what I was
once."  At this moment a new light shone in her face.  "I don't expect
you 'd be willin' to come up here an' stay till spring,--not if I had
Foss's folks stop for you to ride to meetin' every pleasant Sunday, an'
take you down to the Corners plenty o' other times besides?" she said
beseechingly.  "No, Abby, I 'm too old to move now; I should be
homesick down to the village.  If you 'll come an' stay with me, all I
have shall be yours.  Mis' Hand hears me say it."

"Oh, don't you think o' that; you 're all I 've got near to me in the
world, an' I 'll come an' welcome," said Abby, though the thought of
her own little home gave a hard tug at her heart.  "Yes, Aunt Cynthy, I
'll come, an' we 'll be real comfortable together.  I 've been lonesome
sometimes"--

"'Twill be best for both," said Mrs. Hand judicially.  And so the great
question was settled, and suddenly, without too much excitement, it
became a thing of the past.

"We must be thinkin' o' dinner," said Aunt Cynthia gayly.  "I wish I
was better prepared; but there 's nice eggs an' pork an' potatoes, an'
you girls can take hold an' help."  At this moment the roast chicken
and the best mince pies were offered and kindly accepted, and before
another hour had gone they were sitting at their New Year feast, which
Mrs. Dallett decided to be quite proper for the Queen.

Before the guests departed, when the sun was getting low, Aunt Cynthia
called her niece to her side and took hold of her hand.

"Don't you make it too long now, Abby," said she.  "I shall be wantin'
ye every day till you come; but you must n't forgit what a set old
thing I be."

Abby had the kindest of hearts, and was always longing for somebody to
love and care for; her aunt's very age and helplessness seemed to beg
for pity.

"This is Saturday; you may expect me the early part of the week; and
thank you, too, aunt," said Abby.

Mrs. Hand stood by with deep sympathy.  "It's the proper thing," she
announced calmly.  "You 'd both of you be a sight happier; and truth
is, Abby's wild an' reckless, an' needs somebody to stand right over
her, Mis' Dallett.  I guess she 'll try an' behave, but there--there 's
no knowin'!"  And they all laughed.  Then the New Year guests said
farewell and started off down the mountain road.  They looked back more
than once to see Aunt Cynthia's face at the window as she watched them
out of sight.  Miss Abby Pendexter was full of excitement; she looked
as happy as a child.

"I feel as if we 'd gained the battle of Waterloo," said Mrs. Hand.  "I
've really had a most beautiful time.  You an' your aunt must n't
forgit to invite me up some time again to spend another day."



THE NIGHT BEFORE THANKSGIVING.

I.

There was a sad heart in the low-storied, dark little house that stood
humbly by the roadside under some tall elms.  Small as her house was,
old Mrs. Robb found it too large for herself alone; she only needed the
kitchen and a tiny bedroom that led out of it, and there still remained
the best room and a bedroom, with the low garret overhead.

There had been a time, after she was left alone, when Mrs. Robb could
help those who were poorer than herself.  She was strong enough not
only to do a woman's work inside her house, but almost a man's work
outside in her piece of garden ground.  At last sickness and age had
come hand in hand, those two relentless enemies of the poor, and
together they had wasted her strength and substance.  She had always
been looked up to by her neighbors as being independent, but now she
was left, lame-footed and lame-handed, with a debt to carry and her
bare land, and the house ill-provisioned to stand the siege of time.

For a while she managed to get on, but at last it began to be whispered
about that there was no use for any one so proud; it was easier for the
whole town to care for her than for a few neighbors, and Mrs. Robb had
better go to the poorhouse before winter, and be done with it.  At this
terrible suggestion her brave heart seemed to stand still.  The people
whom she cared for most happened to be poor, and she could no longer go
into their households to make herself of use.  The very elms overhead
seemed to say, "Oh, no!" as they groaned in the late autumn winds, and
there was something appealing even to the strange passer-by in the look
of the little gray house, with Mrs. Robb's pale, worried face at the
window.



II.

Some one has said that anniversaries are days to make other people
happy in, but sometimes when they come they seem to be full of shadows,
and the power of giving joy to others, that inalienable right which
ought to lighten the saddest heart, the most indifferent sympathy,
sometimes even this seems to be withdrawn.

So poor old Mary Ann Robb sat at her window on the afternoon before
Thanksgiving and felt herself poor and sorrowful indeed.  Across the
frozen road she looked eastward over a great stretch of cold meadow
land, brown and wind-swept and crossed by icy ditches.  It seemed to
her as if before this, in all the troubles that she had known and
carried, there had always been some hope to hold: as if she had never
looked poverty full in the face and seen its cold and pitiless look
before.  She looked anxiously down the road, with a horrible shrinking
and dread at the thought of being asked, out of pity, to join in some
Thanksgiving feast, but there was nobody coming with gifts in hand.
Once she had been full of love for such days, whether at home or
abroad, but something chilled her very heart now.

Her nearest neighbor had been foremost of those who wished her to go to
the town farm, and he had said more than once that it was the only
sensible thing.  But John Mander was waiting impatiently to get her
tiny farm into his own hands; he had advanced some money upon it in her
extremity, and pretended that there was still a debt, after he cleared
her wood lot to pay himself back.  He would plough over the graves in
the field corner and fell the great elms, and waited now like a spider
for his poor prey.  He often reproached her for being too generous to
worthless people in the past and coming to be a charge to others now.
Oh, if she could only die in her own house and not suffer the pain of
homelessness and dependence!

It was just at sunset, and as she looked out hopelessly across the gray
fields, there was a sudden gleam of light far away on the low hills
beyond; the clouds opened in the west and let the sunshine through.
One lovely gleam shot swift as an arrow and brightened a far cold
hillside where it fell, and at the same moment a sudden gleam of hope
brightened the winter landscape of her heart.

"There was Johnny Harris," said Mary Ann Robb softly.  "He was a
soldier's son, left an orphan and distressed.  Old John Mander scolded,
but I could n't see the poor boy in want.  I kept him that year after
he got hurt, spite o' what anybody said, an' he helped me what little
he could.  He said I was the only mother he 'd ever had.  'I 'm goin'
out West, Mother Robb,' says he.  'I sha'n't come back till I get
rich,' an' then he 'd look at me an' laugh, so pleasant and boyish.  He
wa'n't one that liked to write.  I don't think he was doin' very well
when I heard,--there, it's most four years ago now.  I always thought
if he got sick or anything, I should have a good home for him to come
to.  There 's poor Ezra Blake, the deaf one, too,--he won't have any
place to welcome him."

The light faded out of doors, and again Mrs. Robb's troubles stood
before her.  Yet it was not so dark as it had been in her sad heart.
She still sat by the window, hoping now, in spite of herself, instead
of fearing; and a curious feeling of nearness and expectancy made her
feel not so much light-hearted as light-headed.

"I feel just as if somethin' was goin' to happen," she said.  "Poor
Johnny Harris, perhaps he's thinkin' o' me, if he's alive."

It was dark now out of doors, and there were tiny clicks against the
window.  It was beginning to snow, and the great elms creaked in the
rising wind overhead.



III.

A dead limb of one of the old trees had fallen that autumn, and, poor
firewood as it might be, it was Mrs. Robb's own, and she had burnt it
most thankfully.  There was only a small armful left, but at least she
could have the luxury of a fire.  She had a feeling that it was her
last night at home, and with strange recklessness began to fill the
stove as she used to do in better days.

"It 'll get me good an' warm," she said, still talking to herself, as
lonely people do, "an' I 'll go to bed early.  It's comin' on to storm."

The snow clicked faster and faster against the window, and she sat
alone thinking in the dark.

"There 's lots of folks I love," she said once.  "They 'd be sorry I
ain't got nobody to come, an' no supper the night afore Thanksgivin'.
I 'm dreadful glad they don't know."  And she drew a little nearer to
the fire, and laid her head back drowsily in the old rocking-chair.

It seemed only a moment before there was a loud knocking, and somebody
lifted the latch of the door.  The fire shone bright through the front
of the stove and made a little light in the room, but Mary Ann Robb
waked up frightened and bewildered.

"Who 's there?" she called, as she found her crutch and went to the
door.  She was only conscious of her one great fear.  "They 've come to
take me to the poor-house!" she said, and burst into tears.

There was a tall man, not John Mander, who seemed to fill the narrow
doorway.

"Come, let me in!" he said gayly.  "It's a cold night.  You did n't
expect me, did you, Mother Robb?"

"Dear me, what is it?" she faltered, stepping back as he came in, and
dropping her crutch.  "Be I dreamin'?  I was a-dreamin' about--  Oh,
there!  What was I a-sayin'?  'T ain't true!  No!  I've made some kind
of a mistake."

Yes, and this was the man who kept the poorhouse, and she would go
without complaint; they might have given her notice, but she must not
fret.

"Sit down, sir," she said, turning toward him with touching patience.
"You 'll have to give me a little time.  If I 'd been notified I would
n't have kept you waiting a minute this stormy night."

It was not the keeper of the poorhouse.  The man by the door took one
step forward and put his arm round her and kissed her.

"What are you talking about?" said John Harris.  "You ain't goin' to
make me feel like a stranger?  I 've come all the way from Dakota to
spend Thanksgivin'.  There's all sorts o' things out here in the wagon,
an' a man to help get 'em in.  Why, don't cry so, Mother Robb.  I
thought you 'd have a great laugh, if I come and surprised you.  Don't
you remember I always said I should come?"

It was John Harris, indeed.  The poor soul could say nothing.  She felt
now as if her heart was going to break with joy.  He left her in the
rocking-chair and came and went in his old boyish way, bringing in the
store of gifts and provisions.  It was better than any dream.  He
laughed and talked, and went out to send away the man to bring a
wagonful of wood from John Mander's, and came in himself laden with
pieces of the nearest fence to keep the fire going in the mean time.
They must cook the beef-steak for supper right away; they must find the
pound of tea among all the other bundles; they must get good fires
started in both the cold bedrooms.  Why, Mother Robb did n't seem to be
ready for company from out West!  The great, cheerful fellow hurried
about the tiny house, and the little old woman limped after him,
forgetting everything but hospitality.  Had not she a house for John to
come to?  Were not her old chairs and tables in their places still?
And he remembered everything, and kissed her as they stood before the
fire, as if she were a girl.

He had found plenty of hard times, but luck had come at last.  He had
struck luck, and this was the end of a great year.

"No, I could n't seem to write letters; no use to complain o' the
worst, an' I wanted to tell you the best when I came;" and he told it
while she cooked the supper.  "No, I wa'n't goin' to write no foolish
letters," John repeated.  He was afraid he should cry himself when he
found out how bad things had been; and they sat down to supper
together, just as they used to do when he was a homeless orphan boy,
whom nobody else wanted in winter weather while he was crippled and
could not work.  She could not be kinder now than she was then, but she
looked so poor and old!  He saw her taste her cup of tea and set it
down again with a trembling hand and a look at him.  "No, I wanted to
come myself," he blustered, wiping his eyes and trying to laugh.  "And
you 're going to have everything you need to make you comfortable
long's you live, Mother Robb!"

She looked at him again and nodded, but she did not even try to speak.
There was a good hot supper ready, and a happy guest had come; it was
the night before Thanksgiving.



Books by Sarah Orne Jewett.


  DEEPHAVEN.
  OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.
  COUNTRY BY-WAYS.
  THE MATE OF THE DAYLIGHT, AND FRIENDS ASHORE.
  A COUNTRY DOCTOR.
  A MARSH ISLAND.
  A WHITE HERON, AND OTHER STORIES.
  THE KING OF FOLLY ISLAND, AND OTHER PEOPLE.
  TALES OF NEW ENGLAND.
  STRANGERS AND WAYFARERS.
  A NATIVE OF WINBY, AND OTHER TALES.
  THE LIFE OF NANCY.
  THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS.
  THE QUEEN'S TWIN AND OTHER STORIES.
  PLAY-DAYS.
  BETTY LEICESTER.
  BETTY LEICESTER'S CHRISTMAS.





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