“An’ how did it all come to happen? By the accident of him, a absen’-minded man, takin’ the wrong turn at the cross-roads as he come up from fishin’! The han’ of fate pinted him to Poplars Vale ’stead of Roseborough. An’ there was you, eighteen—an’ allurin’ no doubt, but ’umble an’ uncultured—a-sittin’ on your paw’s farm gate, but lookin’ higher. What a talk it made in these parts! When I says to maw, I says, ‘Mr. Mearely’s goin’ to marry Rosamon’ Cort of Poplars Vale,’ she took to her bed for the day with a spell. Such a shock it was to her to think how him as she’d used to trundle had forgot his station.”
“By marrying a butter-maker?” Rosamond’s voice was sharp at the edges now.
“We said then—maw an’ Jemima an’ me (Mary Caroline havin’ passed beyon’)—we said, ‘We’ll never remember again in this life that Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s fiancy’s mother made an’ sol’ the first roun’ fancy butter pats in this distric’.’ That’s the way all Trenton Waters an’ Roseborough felt bounden towards the Mearelys. That’s, in special, the way His Friggets felt bounden toward Mr. Hibbert Mearely.”
“No doubt he is very grateful to you both, and is waiting eagerly to reward your devotion”—she paused also at the “cross-roads,” so to speak, ere she gestured a vague direction and concluded—“wherever he is.”
If her inflections were strangely pungent and her phraseology speculative, the angle of vision sought by her too large, cloud-flecked, sky-blue eyes was absolutely right. They gazed ceilingward. Amanda folded her hands across her apron. She also looked upward.
“No doubt,” she repeated, solemnly.
“No doubt;” Jemima echoed her sister’s sepulchral accents, and folded her hands and looked at the same bit of the gold cornice. If they had concentrated on this point long enough in rapt faith—who knows?—they might have materialized there the shade of the departed collector of antiquities to demand of them, sternly, which careless handmaid with intrusive mop had nicked his Florentine gilding.
“The raspberries, Jemima, please. I shall always wonder why it is that ... (cream, please) ... the very persons who wouldn’t for worlds ... (and powdered sugar) ... recall the fact that Hibbert Mearely’s widow’s mother once sold butter ... (are you sure this is sugar, Jemima? It looks suspiciously like salt) ... are the very ones who are always reminding me of ... the butter, please.” She finished, tartly.
Jemima hastened to pass the hereditary slur.
“Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t go to say that exac’ly.” Amanda studied the question. “But them what thought so high of Mr. Mearely kind of wants to help you remember what he done for you.”