II
The evening before the day appointed for Mrs. Gibbs’s departure, Betsey came in out of breath.
“What do you reckon?” she asked, as she stood over the hair trunk, which, roped and labeled, stood on end near the widow’s bed. “What you reckon? Joel has made up his mind to go.”
The widow was putting a brightly polished tin coffee-pot into an old-fashioned carpetbag which stood on the white counterpane of her bed. She stood erect, her hands on her hips.
“Looky’ heer, Betsey,” she exclaimed, excitedly, “don’t you joke with me! I’ve jest worried over this undertakin’ till I’ve lost every speck of appetite fer my victuals. I tell you I ain’t in no frame o’ mind fer any light talk on the subject.”
“He’s a-goin’, I tell you!” declared the old maid. “I never dreamt he was in earnest the other day when he fust mentioned it, but all last night he liter’ly rolled an’ tumbled an’ couldn’t git a wink o’ sleep fer worrryin’ over you an’ yore wild-cat project. This mornin’ the fust thing he said was that he’d made up his mind to go ef he could git a round-trip ticket thar an’ back. He told me not to say anything to you tell he had sent to town. Jest a minute ago Jeff Woods got back with the ticket. Joel seems mightily tickled over goin’.”
Mrs. Gibbs sat down. A serious expression had come over her face.
“Ef I’d ‘a’ knowed he raily meant to go I’d ‘a’ stopped ‘im,” she said. “I don’t want to be a bother an’ a burden to my neighbors. Betsey, I’m a-gittin’ to be a lots o’ trouble to other folks.”
“Pshaw!” cried Betsey. “Ef Joel hadn’t ‘a’ wanted to go he’d not ‘a’ bought the ticket. La me, now I ’ll have to go git him ready.”
The next morning, arrayed in his best suit of clothes, new high top-boots, and a venerable silk hat, Joel drove to the widow’s cottage in his spring wagon. While she was locking up the doors he and a negro farmhand placed the widow’s trunk into the back part of the wagon. The neighbors from the farmhouses down the red clay road and across the gray fields and meadows gathered at the gate. When Mrs. Gibbs emerged, their mental comment was that she looked ten years younger than before deciding on the journey.
“All that flushed face an’ shiny eyes is ‘ca’se she’s goin’ to Amos,” remarked a woman who held a little bare-footed boy by the hand. The woman addressed was an unmarried woman old enough to be a grandmother. She looked at the widow’s beaming visage, gave her head a significant toss, and said, contemptuously: “I say! That woman ain’t a-thinkin’ no more ’bout Amos ‘an I am at this minute. It looks to me like some people can’t see a inch before their faces. My Lor’, you make me laugh, Mis’ Ruggles.”
Arriving at the station, Joel turned the widow’s trunk over to the baggage-master, and with her carpet-bag and his own clutched in one hand, he stood on the platform pulling his beard nervously.
“We ’ll have to spend one night on the train,” he said. “I never thought to mention it, but they tell me that a body kin, by payin’ a fraction more, git a place to lie down and stretch out, an’ snooze a bit.”
The widow seemed to have made up her mind that she would not show crude astonishment at anything new to her experience, but her curiosity finally caused her to admit that she had never heard of such an arrangement. So, to the best of his ability, the storekeeper entered into a description of a sleeping-car, lowering the carpet-bags to the platform, and making signs and drawing imaginary lines with his hands.
“Men an’ women in the same car with jest curtains stretched betwixt?” she cried. “No, thank you! I won’t make a fool o’ myse’f if other women does. I kin set up fer one night easy enough, I reckon. I’ve done the like many a time with the sick an’ the dead without feeling the wuss fer it.”
“I hardly ‘lowed it would suit,” stammered Joel, “but I thought thar would be no harm in givin’ you yore choice.”
“Not the least in the world, Joel;” and then she paled, caught her breath, and grabbed her carpet-bag, for the people on the platform were hurrying about; the train was coming.