Miss Prudence Part 27

"Aren't you sorry, don't you want to?" pleaded Marjorie, laying her warm fingers on the hard old hand.

"I'm afraid," whispered the trembling voice. "I never was good enough."

"Oh, dear," sighed Marjorie, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over, "I don't know how to tell you about it. But won't you listen to the minister, he talks so plainly, and he'll tell you not to be afraid."

"They don't go to communion, my son nor his wife; they don't ask me to."

"But they want you to; I know they want you to--before you die,"

persuaded Marjorie. "You are so old now."

"Yes, I'm old. And you shall read to me out of the Testament before you go. Hepsie reads to me, but she gets to crying before she's half through; she can't find 'peace,' she says."

"I wish she could," said Marjorie, almost despairingly.

"Now I'll tell you a story," began the old voice in a livelier tone. "I have to talk about more than fifty years ago--I forget about other things, but I remember when I was young. I'm glad things happened then, for I can remember them."

"Didn't things happen afterward?" asked Marjorie, laughing.

"Not that I remember."

This afternoon was a pleasant change to Marjorie from housework and study, and she remembered more than once that she was doing something to help pay Hollis for the Holland plate.

"Where shall I begin?" began the dreamy, cracked voice, "as far back as I can remember?"

"As far back as you can," said Marjorie, eagerly. "I like old stories best."

"Maybe I'll get things mixed up with my mother and grandmother and not know which is me."

"Rip Van Winkle thought his son was himself," laughed Marjorie, "but you will think you are your grandmother."

"I think over the old times so, sitting here in the dark. Hepsie is no hand to talk much, and Dennis, he's out most of the time, but bedtime comes soon and I can go to sleep. I like to have Dennis come in, he never snaps up his old mother as he does Hepsie and other folks. I don't like to be in the dark and have it so still, a dog yapping is better than no noise, at all. I say, 'Now I lay me' ever so many times a day to keep me company."

"You ought to live at our house, we have noisy times; mother and I sing, and father is always humming about his work. Mr. Holmes is quiet, but Morris is so happy he sings and shouts all day."

"It used to be noisy enough once, too noisy, when the boys were all making a racket together, and Will made noise enough this time he was home. He used to read to me and sing songs. I don't wonder Hepsie is still and mournful, like. It's a changed home to her with the boys away.

My father's house had noise enough in it; he had six wives."

"Not all at once," cried Marjorie alarmed, confounding a hundred years ago with the partriarchal age.

But the old story-teller never heeded interruptions.

"And my marm was the last wife but one. My father was a hundred years and one day when he died. I've outlived all the children, I guess, for I never hear from none of them--I most forget who's dead. Some of them was married before I was born. I was the youngest, and I never remember my own mother, but I had a good mother, all the same."

"You had four step-mothers before you were born," said Marjorie seriously, "and one own mother and then another step-mother. Girls don't have so many step-mothers nowadays."

"And our house was one story--a long house, with the eaves most touching the ground and big chimneys at both ends. It was full of folks."

"I should _think_ so," interposed Marjorie.

"And Sunday nights we used to sing 'G.o.d of my childhood and my youth.'

Can you sing that? I wish you'd sing it to me. I forget what comes next."

"I never heard of it before; I wish you _could_ remember it all, it's so pretty."

"Amzi used to sit next to me and sing--he was my twin brother--as loud and clear as a bell. And when he died they put this on his tombstone:

"'Come see ye place where I do lie As you are now so once was I: As I be now so you will be, Prepare for death and follow me.'"

"Oh," shivered Marjorie, "I don't like it. I like a Bible verse better."

"Isn't that in the Bible?" she asked, angrily.

"I don't believe it is."

"'Prepare to meet thy G.o.d' is."

"Yes," said Marjorie, "that was the text last Sunday."

"And on father's tombstone mother put this verse:

'O, my dear wife, do think of me Although we've from each other parted, O, do prepare to follow me Where we shall love forever.'

"I wish I could remember some more."

"I wish you could," said Marjorie. "Didn't you have all the things we have? You didn't have sewing machines."

"Sewing machines!" returned the old lady, indignantly, "we had our fingers and pins and needles. But sometimes we couldn't have pins and had to pin things together with thorns. How would you like that?"

"I'd rather be born now," said Marjorie. "I wouldn't want to have so many step-mothers as you had, and I'd rather be named Marjorie than _Experience_."

"Experience is a good name, and I'd have earned it by this time if my mother hadn't given it to me," and the sunken lips puckered themselves into a smile. "I could tell you some _dreadful_ things, too, but Hepsie won't like it if I do. I'll tell you one, though. I don't like to think about the dreadful things myself. I used to tell them to my boys and they'd coax me to tell them again, about being murdered and such things.

A girl I knew found out after she was married that her husband had killed a peddler, to steal his money to marry her with, and people found it out and he was hanged and she was left a widow!"

"Oh, dear, _dear_," exclaimed Marjorie, "have dreadful things been always happening? Did she die with a broken heart?"

"No, indeed, she was married afterward and had a good husband. She got through, as people do usually, and then something good happened."

"I'll remember that," said Marjorie, her hazel eyes full of light; "but it was dreadful."

"And there were robbers in those days."

"Were there giants, too?"

"I never saw a giant, but I saw robbers once. The women folks were alone, not even a boy with us, and six robbers came for something to eat and they ransacked the house from garret to cellar; they didn't hurt us at all, but we _were_ scared, no mistake. And after they were gone we found out that the baby was gone, Susannah's little black baby, it had died the day before and mother laid it on a table in the parlor and covered it with a sheet and they had caught it up and ran away with it."

"Oh, _dear_," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Marjorie.

"Father got men out and they hunted, but they never found the robbers or the baby. If Susannah didn't cry n.o.body ever did! She had six other children but this baby was so cunning! We used to feed it and play with it and had cried our eyes sore the day it died. But we never found it."