The Girl From Tim's Place

by Charles Clark Munn

CHAPTER XLII

With September came a supreme event in the lives of Chip and Ray, when Mr. and Mrs. Frisbie, Aunt Comfort, Miss Phinney and Hannah, Uncle Jud and Aunt Mandy, and Old Cy, all gathered in Aunt Abby’s quaint parlor to see her aged pastor join their hands and lives. Then came the kisses, the congratulations, the rice, and old-shoe throwing, and then solitude and tears for Aunt Abby. All the wedding guests except Old Cy hied themselves away with the new pair, and he left for Bayport.

And thus closes the history of Chip McGuire, waif of the wilderness and slave of Tim’s Place.

Bless her!

Two days later Old Cy returned.

No one was in the house when he knocked at Aunt Abby’s door, and then, led perhaps by the invisible chord that spanned forty years, he slowly strolled up the path beside the old mill-pond, which he and she had often followed in the old, old days.

His heart had led him aright, for there, at the foot of the ancient oak that had once been their trysting-place, she sat.

“I thought I’d come over ’n’ bid ye good-bye, Abby,” he said gently, as she arose to meet him. “I’ve been doin’ a good deal o’ biddin’ good-bye to-day. I bid good-bye to the old graveyard whar my folks is; it’s all growed up to weeds ’n’ bushes, I’m sorry to say. But that can’t be helped. It’s the way o’ natur. I’ve been down to the p’int whar you ’n’ I used to go, an’ I bid that good-bye,” he added, seating himself near her. “Ye ’member it, don’t ye, Abby, ’n’ them days when we went thar to watch the waves?”

“I do, Cyrus,” she answered, her voice trembling. “I remember all the old days only too well.”

“They all come back to me, too,” he continued in a lower tone, “an’ I wish I could skip back to ’em, but I can’t. I’m an old man now, an’ no use to nobody, ’n’ not much to myself. I’ve been a wanderer many years–ye know why, Abby. I’ve had a short spell o’ joy, kinder helpin’ this boy ’n’ gal into sunshine ’n’ a home. They’ve gone their way now ’n’ sure to forgit me an’ you. It’s nat’ral they should, ’n’ all that’s left me is to go back to the woods ’n’ stay.”