Thrifty Stock, and Other Stories

by Ben Ames Williams

And he went through the barn and left Will standing there, down into the wood to a spot where the partridges love to come in the late fall for feed, and made a bed there and lined it thick with boughs and so at last laid Old Tantry to sleep.

His supper that night was solitary and cheerless and dreary and alone. But—Will Bissell must have spread the news, for while Chet was washing the dishes someone knocked, and when he turned Mary Thurman opened the door and came in.

Chet could not bear to look at her. He turned awkwardly and sat down at the kitchen table and buried his head in his arms. And Mary, smiling though her eyes were wet, came toward him. There was the mother light in her eyes, the mother radiance in Mary Thurman’s face. And she took Chet’s lonely head in her arms.

“There, Chet, there!” she whispered softly. “I reckon you need me now.”

ONE CROWDED HOUR

I

JEFF RANNEY lived on the road from East Harbor to Fraternity, some eight miles from the bay. He was, at the period of which I write, a man fifty-seven years old, and his life had been as completely uneventful as life can be. He had never had an adventure, had never suffered a catastrophe, had never achieved any great thing, had never even been called upon to endure a particularly poignant grief. He was born in the house where he still lived and save for one trip to Portland had never crossed the county line. He married the daughter of a man whose farm lay on the other side of Fraternity. She was not particularly pretty at any time; and he had never any passion for her, though he had always liked her well enough, and had always been kind. His father and mother lived till he was in his forties, then died peaceably in their beds. He had been a child of their later years, and before they died they had become almost completely helpless, so that he felt it was time for them to go. He and his wife had three children, all of whom grew to maturity. The oldest, a girl, married an East Harbor boy who later moved to Augusta; the other two, boys, went to Augusta to work in a factory there, preferring the ordered hours of confined toil to the long and irregular tasks upon the farm.

Now and then Jeff’s wife departed to visit her daughter, leaving him to keep bachelor hall alone. He managed comfortably enough; his life, then as always, followed a well-ordered and familiar routine. He rose at daylight, cared for his stock, made his own breakfast, did whatever tasks lay before him for the day, finished his chores before cooking supper at night, washed the dishes, read the evening paper till he fell asleep in his chair, and then went to bed. Now and then in the spring and summer months he found time to catch a mess of trout; now and then in the fall or winter he shot a partridge or a rabbit. When there was a circus in East Harbor, or a fair, he went to town for the day. When there was a dance in the Grange Hall he and his wife had used to go; but they had long since ceased these frivolities.

Jeff’s farm was well kept; he had a profitable orchard, his cows were of good stock. When the price of feed made the enterprise worth while he raised a few pigs. There was no mortgage on the farm, his taxes were paid, he owed no bills, his buildings were in good condition, he owned a secondhand automobile and a piano, and he had some few hundred dollars in the bank. It is fair to say that by the standards of the community in which he lived he was a prosperous man. He was also a just man, and he had a native sense and wit which his neighbors respected.