“They was all rocked in it, Seth,” she was saying,--“John and the twins and my two little girls; and now there ain’t any one left only John--and the cradle.”
“I know, Hannah, but you ain’t usin’ that nowadays, so you don’t really need it,” comforted the old man. “But there’s my big chair now-- seems as though we jest oughter take that. Why, there ain’t a day goes by that I don’t set in it!”
“But John’s wife says there’s better ones there, Seth,” soothed the old woman in her turn, “as much as four or five of ’em right in our rooms.”
“So she did, so she did!” murmured the man. “I’m an ongrateful thing; so I be.” There was a long pause. The old man drummed with his fingers on the trunk and watched a cloud sail across the skylight. The woman gently swung the cradle to and fro. “If only they wan’t goin’ ter be--sold!” she choked, after a time. “I like ter know that they’re where I can look at ’em, an’ feel of ’em, an’--an’ remember things. Now there’s them quilts with all my dress pieces in ’em--a piece of most every dress I’ve had since I was a girl; an’ there’s that hair wreath--seems as if I jest couldn’t let that go, Seth. Why, there’s your hair, an’ John’s, an’ some of the twins’, an’--”
“There, there, dear; now I jest wouldn’t fret,” cut in the old man quickly. “Like enough when you get used ter them other things on the wall you’ll like ’em even better than the hair wreath. John’s wife says she’s taken lots of pains an’ fixed ’em up with pictures an’ curtains an’ everythin’ nice,” went on Seth, talking very fast. “Why, Hannah, it’s you that’s bein’ ongrateful now, dear!”
“So ’tis, so ‘tis, Seth, an’ it ain’t right an’ I know it. I ain’t a-goin’ ter do so no more; now see!” And she bravely turned her back on the cradle and walked, head erect, toward the attic stairs.
John came at five o’clock. He engulfed the little old man and the little old woman in a bearlike hug, and breezily demanded what they had been doing to themselves to make them look so forlorn. In the very next breath, however, he answered his own question, and declared it was because they had been living all cooped up alone so long--so it was; and that it was high time it was stopped, and that he had come to do it! Whereupon the old man and the old woman smiled bravely and told each other what a good, good son they had, to be sure!
Friday dawned clear, and not too warm--an ideal auction-day. Long before nine o’clock the yard was full of teams and the house of people. Among them all, however, there was no sign of the bent old man and the erect little old woman, the owners of the property to be sold. John and Mrs. John were not a little disturbed--they had lost their father and mother.
Nine o’clock came, and with it began the strident call of the auctioneer. Men laughed and joked over their bids, and women looked on and gossiped, adding a bid of their own now and then. Everywhere was the son of the house, and things went through with a rush. Upstairs, in the darkest corner of the attic--which had been cleared of goods--sat, hand in hand on an old packing-box, a little old man and a little old woman who winced and shrank together every time the “Going, going, gone!” floated up to them from the yard below.
At half-past one the last wagon rumbled out of the yard, and five minutes later Mrs. John gave a relieved cry.