Meadow Grass: Tales of New England Life Part 5

So I took her in, and the overseer said I was welcome to her. She's a nice little soul."

"She's proper good-lookin'!" Lucindy's eyes were sparkling.

"She don't look as well as common to-day, for the boys went off plummin' without her. She was asleep, and I didn't want to call her.

She had a cryin' spell when she waked up, but I didn't know which way they'd gone."

Ellen came wandering round the side of the house, and Lucindy crooked a trembling finger at her.

"Come here!" she called. "You come here and see me!"

Ellen walked up to her with a steady step, and laid one little brown hand on Lucindy's knee. But the old Judge's daughter drew the child covetously to her lap.

"Look here," she said, "should you like to go home and spend a week with me?"

The little maid threw back her tangle of curls, and looked Lucindy squarely in the eyes.

"Yes," she answered.

Lucindy's grasp tightened round her.

"How should you like to live with me?"

The child touched her little breast inquiringly with one finger.

"Me?" She pointed over to Mrs. McNeil, who lay listening and stretching her limbs in lazy comfort. "Leave _her_?" And then, gravely, "No; she's good to me."

Lucindy's heart sank.

"You could come over to see her," she pleaded, "and I'd come too. We'd all go plummin' together. I should admire to! And we'd have parties, and ask 'em all over. What say?"

The child sat straight and serious, one warm hand clinging to Lucindy's slender palm. But her eyes still sought the face of her older friend.

Molly McNeil rose to a sitting posture. She took the straw from her mouth, and spoke with the happy frankness of those who have no fear because they demand nothing save earth and sky room.

"I know who you are," she said to Lucindy. "You're left well off, and I guess you could bring up a child, give you your way. We're as poor as poverty! You take her, if she'll go. Ellen, she's a nice lady; you better say 'yes.'"

Lucindy was trembling all over.

"You come, dear," she urged, piteously. "You come and live with me."

Ellen thought a moment more. Then she nodded.

"I'll come," said she.

Lucindy could not wait.

"I'll send a wagon over after her to-night." She had put Ellen down, and was rising tremblingly. "I won't stop to talk no more now, but you come and see me, won't you? Now, if you'll help me mount up--there! My! it's higher 'n 'twas before! Well, I'll see you again." She turned Old Buckskin's head away from the fence; then she pulled him fiercely round again. "Here!" she called, "what if she should jump up behind me and come now!"

Mrs. McNeil, being the thrall only of the earth, saw no reason, why a thing should not be done as one wanted it. She lifted; the child and set her on the horse behind Lucindy. And so, in this strange fashion, the two entered the high street of Tiverton.

A few weeks after this, Mrs. Wilson and Lucindy went together to the little millinery shop. Ellen trotted between them, taking excursions into the street, now and again, in pursuit of b.u.t.terflies or thistledown. When they entered, Miss West, who had seen their approach from her position at the ironing-board, came forward with a gay little hat in her hand. It was trimmed with pink, and a wreath of tiny white flowers clung about the crown. She set it on Ellen's curls; and Ellen, her face quite radiant, looked up at Miss Lucindy for approval. But that lady was gazing anxiously at Mrs. Wilson.

"Now, there ain't anything unsuitable about that, is there?" she asked.

"I know, it's gay, and I want it to be gay. I can tell about _that_!

But is it all right? Is it such as you'd be willin' to have Claribel wear?"

"It's a real beauty!" Mrs. Wilson answered, cordially; but she could not refrain from adding, while Miss West was doing up the hat, and Ellen surrept.i.tiously tried on a black poke bonnet, "Now, don't you spile her, Lucindy! She's a nice little girl as ever was, but you ain't no more fit to bring up a child than the cat!"

Lucindy did not hear. She was smiling at Ellen, and Ellen smiled back at her. They thought they knew.

TOLD IN THE POORHOUSE.

"Le' me see," said old Sally Flint, "was it fifty year ago, or was it on'y forty? Some'er's betwixt 1825 an' '26 it must ha' been when they were married, an' 'twas in '41 he died."

The other old women in the Poorhouse sitting-room gathered about her.

Old Mrs. Forbes, who dearly loved a story, unwound a length of yarn with peculiar satisfaction, and put her worn shoe up to the fire.

Everybody knew when Sally Flint was disposed to open her unwritten book of folk-tales for the public entertainment; and to-day, having tied on a fresh ap.r.o.n and bound a new piece of red flannel about her wrist, she was, so to speak, in fighting trim. The other members of the Poorhouse had scanty faith in that red flannel. They were aware that Sally had broken her wrist, some twenty years before, and that the bandage was consequently donned on days when her "hand felt kind o' cold," or was "burnin' like fire embers;" but there was an unspoken suspicion that it really served as token of her inability to work whenever she felt bored by the prescribed routine of knitting and sweeping. No one had dared presume on that theory, however, since the day when an untactful overseer had mentioned it, to be met by such a stream of unpleasant reminiscence concerning his immediate ancestry that he had retreated in dismay, and for a week after, had served extra pieces of pie to his justly offended charge.

"They were married in June," continued Sally. "No, 'twa'n't; 'twas the last o' May. May thirty-fust--no, May 'ain't but thirty days, has it?"

"'Thirty days hath September,'" quoted Mrs. Giles, with importance.

"That's about all I've got left o' my schoolin', Miss Flint. May's got thirty-one days, sure enough."

"Call it the thirty-fust, then. It's nigh enough, anyway. Well, Josh Marden an' Lyddy Ann Crane was married, an' for nine year they lived like two kittens. Old Sperry Dyer, that wanted to git Lyddy himself, used to call 'em cup an' sa.s.ser, 'There they be,' he'd say, when he stood outside the meetin'-house door an' they drove up; 'there comes cup an' sa.s.ser.' Lyddy was a little mite of a thing, with great black eyes; an' if Josh hadn't been as tough as tripe, he'd ha' got all wore out waitin' on her. He even washed the potaters for her, made the fires, an' lugged water. Scairt to death if she was sick! She used to have sick headaches, an' one day he stopped choppin' pine limbs near the house 'cause the noise hurt Lyddy Ann's head. Another time, I recollect, she had erysipelas in her face, an' I went in to carry some elder-blows, an' found him readin' the Bible. 'Lord!' says I, 'Josh; that's on'y Genesis! 'twon't do the erysipelas a mite o' good for you to be settin' there reading the be'gats! You better turn to Revelation.' But 'twa'n't all on his side, nuther. 'Twas give an' take with them. It used to seem as if Lyddy Ann kind o' worshipped him.

'Josh' we all called him; but she used to say 'Joshuay,' an' look at him as if he was the Lord A'mighty."

"My! Sally!" said timid Mrs. Spenser, under her breath; but Sally gave no heed, and swept on in the stream of her recollections.

"Well, it went on for fifteen year, an' then 'Mandy Knowles, Josh's second cousin, come to help 'em with the work. 'Mandy was a queer creatur'. I've studied a good deal over her, an' I dunno's I've quite got to the bottom of her yit. She was one o' them sort o' slow women, with a fat face, an' she hadn't got over dressin' young, though Lyddy an' the rest of us that was over thirty was wearin' caps an' talkin'

about false fronts. But she never'd had no beaux; an' when Josh begun to praise her an' say how nice 'twas to have her there, it tickled her e'en a'most to death. She'd lived alone with her mother an' two old-maid aunts, an' she didn't know nothin' about men-folks; I al'ays thought she felt they was different somehow,--kind o' cherubim an'

seraphim,--an' you'd got to mind 'em as if you was the Childern of Isr'el an' they was Moses. Josh never meant a mite o' harm, I'll say that for him. He was jest man-like, that's all. There's lots o'

different kinds,--here, Mis' Niles, you know; you've buried your third,--an' Josh was the kind that can't see more'n, one woman to a time. He looked at 'Mandy, an' he got over seein' Lyddy Ann, that's all. Things would ha' come out all right--as right as they be for most married folks--if Lyddy Ann hadn't been so high-sperited; but she set the world by Joshuay, an' there 'twas. 'Ain't it nice to have her here?' he kep' on sayin' over'n' over to Lyddy, an' she'd say 'Yes;'

but byme-by, when she found he was al'ays on hand to bring a pail o'

water for 'Mandy, or to throw away her suds, or even help hang out the clo'es--I see 'em hangin' out clo'es one day when I was goin' across their lot huckleberr'in', an' he did look like a great gump, an' so did she--well, then, Lyddy Ann got to seemin' kind o' worried, an' she had more sick headaches than ever. Twa'n't a year afore that, I'd been in one day when she had a headache, an' he says, as if he was perfessin'

his faith in meetin', 'By gum! I wish I could have them headaches for her!' an' I thought o' speakin' of it, about now, when I run in to borrer some saleratus, an' he hollered into the bedroom: 'Lyddy Ann, you got another headache? If I had such a head as that, I'd cut it off!' An' all the time 'Mandy did act like the very Old Nick, jest as any old maid would that hadn't set her mind on menfolks till she was thirty-five. She bought a red-plaid bow an' pinned it on in front, an'

one day I ketched her at the lookin'-gla.s.s pullin' out a gray hair.

"'Land, 'Mandy,' says I (I spoke right up), 'do you pull 'em out as fast as they come? That's why you ain't no grayer, I s'pose. I was sayin' the other day, "'Mandy Knowles is gittin' on, but she holds her own pretty well. I dunno how she manages it, whether she dyes or not,"'

says I.

"An' afore she could stop herself, 'Mandy turned round, red as a beet, to look at Josh an' see if he heard. He stamped out into the wood-house, but Lyddy Ann never took her eyes off her work. Them little spiteful things didn't seem to make no impression on her. I've thought a good many times sence, she didn't care how handsome other women was, nor how scrawny she was herself, if she could on'y keep Josh. An' Josh he got kind o' fretful to her, an' she to him, an' 'Mandy was all honey an' cream. Nothin' would do but she must learn how to make the gingerbread he liked, an' iron his shirts; an' when Lyddy Ann found he seemed to praise things up jest as much as he had when she done 'em, she give 'em up, an' done the hard things herself, an' let 'Mandy see to Josh. She looked pretty pindlin' then, mark my words; but I never see two such eyes in anybody's head. I s'pose 'twas a change for Josh, anyway, to be with a woman like 'Mandy, that never said her soul's her own, for Lyddy'd al'ays had a quick way with her; but, land! you can't tell about men, what changes 'em or what don't. If you're tied to one, you've jest got to bear with him, an' be thankful if he don't run some kind of a rig an' make you town-talk."

There was a murmur from gentle Lucy Staples, who had been constant for fifty years to the lover who died in her youth; but no one took any notice of her, and Sally Flint went on:

"It come spring, an' somehow or nuther 'Mandy found out the last o'

March was Josh's birthday, an' nothin' would do but she must make him a present. So she walked over to Sudleigh, an' bought him a great long pocket-book that you could put your bills into without foldin' 'em, an'