Mrs. Tree Part 7

"It won't hurt your teethache any. Run now, and I'll make you a saucer-pie next time I'm baking."

"You allers say that, and then you never!" grumbled Isaac, dragging reluctant feet toward the door.

"Isick Weight, don't you speak to me like that! I'll tell your pa, if you don't do as I tell you."

"Well, ain't I goin', quick as I can? I won't go through Candy's yard, though; that mean Tom Candy's waitin' for me now with a big rock, 'cause I got him sent home for actin' in school. I'll go and ask the man who he is. S'pose he knows."

"You won't do nothing of the sort. There! no matter--it's too late now.

You're a real aggravatin', naughty-actin' boy, Isick Weight, and I believe you've been sent home your own self for cuttin' up--not that I doubt Tommy Candy was, too. I shall ask your father to whip you good when he gits home."

"Well, Mary Jaquith, here you sit."

"Mrs. Tree! Is this you? My dear soul, what brings you out so early in the morning? Come in! come in! Who is with you?"

"I didn't say any one was with me!" snapped Mrs. Tree. "Don't you go to setting up double-action ears like mine, Mary, because you are not old enough. How are you? obstinate as ever?"

The blind woman smiled. In her plain print dress, she had the air of a masquerading d.u.c.h.ess, and her blue eyes were as clear and beautiful as those which were watching her from the door.

"Take this chair," she said, pushing forward a straight-backed armchair.

"It's the one you always like. How am I obstinate, dear Mrs. Tree?"

"If I've asked you once to come and live with me, I've asked you fifty times," grumbled the old lady, sitting down with a good deal of flutter and rustle. "There I must stay, left alone at my age, with n.o.body but that old goose of a Direxia Hawkes to look after me. And all because you like to be independent. Set you up! Well, I sha'n't ask you again, and so I've come to tell you, Mary Jaquith."

"Dear old friend, you forgive me, I know. You never can have thought for a moment, seriously, that I could be a burden on your kind hands. There surely is some one with you, Mrs. Tree! Is it Direxia? Please be seated, whoever it is."

She turned her beautiful face and clear, quiet eyes toward the door.

There was a slight sound, as of a sob checked in the outbreak. Mrs. Tree shook her head, fiercely. The blind woman rose from her seat, very pale.

"Who is it?" she said. "Be kind, please, and tell me."

"I'm going to tell you," said Mrs. Tree, "if you will have patience for two minutes, and not drive every idea out of my head with your questions. Mary, I--I had a visitor last night. Some one came to see me--an old acquaintance--who had--who had heard of w.i.l.l.y lately. w.i.l.l.y is--doing well, my dear. Now, Mary Jaquith, if you don't sit down, I won't say another word. Of all the unreasonable women I ever saw in my life--"

Mrs. Tree stopped, and rose abruptly from her seat. The blind woman was holding out her arms with a heavenly gesture of appeal, of welcome, of love unutterable: her face was the face of an angel. Another moment, and her son's arms were round her, and her head on his bosom, and he was crying over and over again, "Mother! mother! mother!" as if he could not have enough of the word.

"Arthur was a nice boy, too!" said Mrs. Tree, as she closed the door behind her.

Five minutes later, Mrs. Weight, hurrying up the plank walk which led to the Widow Jaquith's door, was confronted by the figure of her opposite neighbor, sitting on the front doorstep, leaning her chin on her stick, and looking, as Mrs. Weight told the deacon afterward, like Satan's grandmother.

"Want to see Mary Jaquith?" asked Mrs. Tree. "Well, she's engaged, and you can't. Here! give me your arm, Viny, and take me over to the girls'.

I want to see how Phoebe is this morning. She was none too spry yesterday."

CHAPTER VI.

THE NEW POSTMASTER

Politics had little hold in Elmerton. When any question of public interest was to be settled, the elders of the village met and settled it; if they disagreed among themselves, they went to Mrs. Tree, and she told them what to do. People sometimes wondered what would happen when Mrs. Tree died, but there seemed no immediate danger of this.

"Truth and Trees live forever!" was the saying in the village.

When Israel Nudd, the postmaster, died, Elmerton found little difficulty in recommending his successor. The day after his funeral, the elders a.s.sembled at the usual place of meeting, the post-office piazza. This was a narrow platform running along one side of the post-office building, and commanding a view of the sea. A row of chairs stood along the wall on their hind legs. They might be supposed to have lost the use of their fore legs, simply because they never were used. In these chairs the elders sat, and surveyed the prospect.

"Tide's makin'," said John Peavey.

No one seemed inclined to contradict this statement.

"Water looks rily," John Peavey continued. "Goin' to be a change o'

weather."

"I never see no sense in that," remarked Seth Weaver. "Why should a change of weather make the water rily beforehand? Besides, it ain't."

"My Uncle Ammi lived to a hundred and two," said John Peavey, slowly, "and he never doubted it. You're allers contrary, Seth. If I said I had a nose on my face, you'd say it warn't so."

"Wal, some might call it one," rejoined Seth, with a cautious glance. "I ain't fond of committin' myself."

"Meetin' come to order!" said Salem Rock, interrupting this preliminary badinage.

"Brether--I--I would say, gentlemen, we have met to recommend a postmaster for this village, in the room of Israel Nudd, diseased. What is your pleasure in this matter? I s'pose Homer'd ought to have it, hadn't he?"

The conclave meditated. No one had the smallest doubt that Homer ought to have it, but it was not well to decide matters too hastily.

"Homer's none too speedy," said Abram Cutter. "He gets to moonin' over the mail sometimes, and it seems as if you'd git Kingdom Come before you got the paper. But I never see no harm in Home."

"Not a mite," was the general verdict.

"Homer's as good as gingerbread," said Salem Rock, heartily. "He knows the business, ben in it sence he was a boy, and there's no one else doos. My 'pinion, he'd oughter have the job."

He spoke emphatically, and all the others glanced at him with approval; but there was no hurry. The mail would not be in for half an hour yet.

"There's the _Fidely_," said Seth Weaver. "Goin' up river for logs, I expect."

A dingy tug came puffing by. As she pa.s.sed, a sooty figure waved a salutation, and the whistle screeched thrice. Seth Weaver swung his hat in acknowledgment.

"Joe Derrick," he said. "Him and me run her a spell together last year."

"How did she run?" inquired John Peavey.

"Like a wu'm with the rheumatiz," was the reply. "The logs in the river used to roll over and groan, to see lumber put together in such shape.

She ain't safe, neither. I told Joe so when I got out. I says, 'It's time she was to her long home,' I says, 'but I don't feel no call to be one of the bearers,' I says. Joe's reckless. I expect he'll keep right on till she founders under him, and then walk ash.o.r.e on his feet. They are bigger than some rafts I've seen, I tell him."

"Speaking of bearers," said Abram Cutter, "hadn't we ought to pa.s.s a vote of thanks to Isr'el, or something?"