“WESTWARD OF GREEN’S BROOK”
WIDOW MOLLY
Westward of Greene’s brook on the road to Oakdale there stands a substantial country residence. You will recognize it in driving by, for just south, across the road is a lot with small spindle cedars growing all irregular, everywhere in fact, some perhaps the height of a man’s waist, but the most not higher than his knee.
“Poor land,” you will say. Well, I believe it is. Else why are those little wizened cedars there? They have grown there who knows how long? They never get bigger, and have each the appearance, when you come close, of being a hundred years old. But the lot with them on, bends its mile of curve gradually down to the Great South Bay, and leaves you a broad view of that body of water, very blue and very beautiful at times.
A century and nine years ago, there stood across the road opposite this lot a small inn. At what time it was demolished, I could never learn; but I have no doubt some of its wrecked timbers are doing upright duty to this very day, in bracing the partitions of the [present residence].
Sometimes the New York stage stopped at this inn, but its usual halting-place was a few miles to the west at Champlin’s. Whenever it did stop, the passengers had good cheer, for the little inn was kept by Widow Molly—a woman of sunny face and hopeful disposition. Her eyes were large, and, you would say, a little too deeply placed; but their look was honest and as unsuspecting as the stars. She had broad hips of which she was a trifle proud, a round arm and a very pretty hand, a deep chest, arching high, and her weight must have been not more than a pound or two either side of one hundred and sixty.
There was no end of trooping in those days, and many a company of horsemen stopped at Widow Molly’s. Her slave, Ebo, would give the best care to the horses, while she entertained their riders. And if the troopers had time and it came to a game of seven-up, she could play as strong a hand as any one of them. The hours on such halts went too fast, and often afterwards there was hard riding to regain time lost lingering. But of all the riders who dismounted at her door, there was one who came alone and went alone, and whose visits were beginning to hint of regularity. He came from the section about Ronkonkoma Pond, seven miles, perhaps, to the northward. Whoever knew him, knew him as the young squire. Seven-and-thirty years old, prosperous, of sound judgment, he well deserved the note the office gave him.
In the spring that came a century and nine years ago, the young squire, who had always a passion for cracking away at stray ducks that settled in the Pond, resolved to go gunning to the “South Side.” And many a morning or afternoon he lay behind the cedars that grew along the shore of the Great South Bay, and tolled in ducks, by flapping over his head a piece of bright red flannel tied to his ramrod. On these gunning expeditions he always stopped at the inn, and finally, instead of carrying his firelock home, he left it in the keeping of Widow Molly. The hostess stood the gun in the corner of the front room.