Father Brighthopes Part 18

"It would do very well five years ago," said Deacon Dustan. "But our society has come up wonderfully. We have got just the right kind of minister now. Mr. Corlis is doing a great thing for us. I don't think we could have got a more popular preacher. He is very desirous to see the movement go on."

Mr. Royden said he would consider the matter; a few more remarks were pa.s.sed, touching the business of farmers, the favorable state of the weather to commence haying, and so forth; and the deacon, switching his little black pony, pursued his way.

"I am not much in favor of building a new meeting-house," said Mr.

Royden, with a dissatisfied air, driving on. "Although I am not a church-member, I shall feel obliged to give in proportion with my neighbors towards the enterprise."

"Is not the old house a good one?" asked Father Brighthopes.

"As good as any, only it is old-fashioned. Our people are getting ashamed of the high pulpit and high-backed pews, since Mr. Corlis has been with us. Deacon Dustan, who has some fashionable daughters, and a farm near the proposed site of the new house, appears to be the prime mover in the affair."

"He probably views it in a purely business light, then?"

"Yes," said Mr. Royden. "The vanity of his daughters will be gratified, and the price of his land enhanced. I ought not to speak so,"--laughing,--"but the truth is, the deacon is the shrewdest man to deal with in the neighborhood."

"A jolly, good-natured man, I should judge?"

"One of the best! A capital story-teller, and eater of good dinners. But he has an eye to speculation. He is keen. Mark Wheeler, who is a close jockey, declares he was never cheated till the deacon got hold of him."

Father Brighthopes shook his head sadly. He was not pleased to pursue the subject. Presently he began to talk, in his peculiarly interesting and delightful way, about the great philosophy of life, and Mr. Royden was glad to listen.

In this manner they pa.s.sed by the minister's cottage, the old-fashioned meeting-house and the pleasant dwellings scattered around it; and finally came to a large, showy white house, shaded by trees, and surrounded by handsome grounds, which Mr. Royden pointed out as Deacon Dustan's residence.

A little further on, they came to a little brown, weather-beaten, dilapidated house, built upon a barren hill. Here Mr. Royden stopped.

"This is one of Deacon Dustan's houses," said he. "Job Bowen, an old soldier, who lost a leg in the war of 1812, lives here. He is now a shoemaker. I hope I shall be able to engage his daughter Margaret to come and live with us. Will you go in, or sit in the wagon?"

"I shall feel better to get out and stir a little," replied the clergyman.

Mr. Royden tied Old Bill to a post, and, letting down a pair of bars for his aged friend, accompanied him along a path of saw-dust and rotten chips to the door.

They were admitted by a bent and haggard woman, who said "good-morning"

to Mr. Royden and his companion, in a tone so hoa.r.s.e and melancholy as to be exceedingly painful to their ears.

"Will you walk in?" she asked, holding the door open.

"Thank you. Is your daughter Margaret at home now?"

"Yes, she is."

Mrs. Bowen talked like a person who had lost all her back teeth, and her accents seemed more and more unhappy and forbidding.

"I called to see if you could let her come and help us next week," said Mr. Royden.

"I don't know. Sit down. I'll see what she says."

Having placed a couple of worn, patched and mended wooden chairs, for the callers, in the business room of the house, Mrs. Bowen disappeared.

Father Brighthopes looked about him with a softened, sympathizing glance; but, before sitting down, went and shook hands with a sallow individual, who was making shoes in one corner. He was a short, stumpy, queer-looking man, past the middle age, with a head as bald as an egg, and ears that stood out in bold relief behind his temples. Sitting upon a low bench, his wooden leg--for this was Job, the soldier--stuck out straight from his body, diverging slightly from the left knee, on which he hammered the soles of his customers.

"Ah! how do you do?" said he, in a soft, deliberate half-whisper, as Father Brighthopes addressed him.

With his right hand,--having carefully wiped it upon his pantaloons, or rather pantaloon, for his luck in war enabled him to do with half a pair,--he greeted the old clergyman modestly and respectfully, while with his left he raised his steel-bowed gla.s.ses from his nose.

"My friend," said Father Brighthopes, "you seem industriously at work, this morning."

"Pegging away,--pegging away!" replied Job, with a childlike smile.

"Always pegging, you know."

There was an evident attempt at so much more cheerfulness in his voice than he really felt, that the effect was quite touching.

"That's my mother," he added, as the clergyman turned to shake hands with a wrinkled, unconscious-looking object, who sat wrapped in an old blanket, in a rocking-chair. "A kind old woman, but very deaf. You'll have to speak loud."

"Good-morning, mother," cried Father Brighthopes, raising his voice, and taking her withered hand.

The old woman seemed to start up from a sort of dream, and a feeble gleam of intelligence crossed her seamed and bloodless features, as she fixed her watery eye upon the clergyman.

"Oh, yes!" she cried, mumbling the shrill words between her toothless gums, "I remember all about it. Sally's darter was born on the tenth of June, in eighteen-four. Her husband's mother was a Higgins."

The clergyman smiled upon her sadly, nodded a.s.sent, and, laying her hand gently upon her lap, turned away.

"Her mind's a runnin' on old times, and she don't hear a word you say, sir," observed Job, in his peculiar half-whisper, slow, subdued, but very distinct. "She don't take much notice o' what's goin' on now-days, and we have to screech to her to make her understand anything. A kind old lady, sir, but past her time, and very deaf."

Mr. Royden squeezed a drop of moisture out of his eye, and coughed.

Meanwhile the aged woman relapsed into the dreamy state from which she had been momentarily aroused, drawing the dingy blanket around her cold limbs, and whispering over some dim memory of the century gone by.

XV.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A WOODEN LEG.

"You have a good trade, friend Bowen," said Father Brighthopes, drawing his chair near the shoemaker's bench.

"It does capital for me!" replied Job, cheerfully. "Since I got a bayonet through my knee at Lundy's Lane, I find I get on best in the world sittin' still."

He smiled pleasantly over this feeble attempt at humor, and arranged some waxed ends, which, for convenience, he had hung upon his wooden leg.

"Did you learn shoe-making before you went soldiering?" asked the clergyman.

"I'd been a 'prentice. But I tired of the monotony. So I quarreled with my trade, and fought my _last_ at Lundy's Lane, as I tell people," said Job, with twinkling eyes.

"You got the worst of it?"

"All things considered I did. This fighting is bad business; and, you see, I decidedly put my foot in it."

Job touched his wooden leg significantly, to ill.u.s.trate the joke.