Aunt Jane dropped her knitting in her lap, and gazed across the fields as if she were seeking in the sunlit ether the faces of those who moved and spoke in her story. A farm wagon came lumbering through the stillness, and she gathered up the double thread of story and knitting and went on.
"Annie always said she was goin' to have such a weddin' as the county never had seen, and she kept her word. Old Man Bob had the house fixed up inside and out. They sent up to Louisville for the cakes and things, and the weddin' cake was three feet high. There was a solid gold ring in it, and the bridesmaids cut for it; and every gyirl there had a slice o' the bride's cake to carry home to dream on that night. Annie's weddin' dress was white satin so heavy it stood alone, so they said. And Old Man Bob had the whole neighborhood laughin', tellin' how many heifers and steers it took to pay for the lace around the neck of it.
"Annie and Dick was married in October about the time the leaves fell, and Milly's boy was born the last o' November. Lord! Lord! what a world this is! Old Man Bob wouldn't hear to Annie's leavin' him, so they stayed right on in the old home place. In them days folks didn't go a-lopin' all over creation as soon as they got married; they settled down to housekeepin' like sensible folks ought to do. Old Lady Elrod was as foolish over Dick as Old Man Bob was over Annie, and it was laid down beforehand that they was to spend half the time at Old Man Bob's and half the time at the Squire's, 'bout the worst thing they could 'a' done. The further a young couple can git from the old folks on both sides the better for everybody concerned. And besides, Annie wasn't the kind of a gyirl to git along with Dick's mother. A gyirl with the kind o' raisin' Annie'd had wasn't any fit daughter-in-law for a particular, high-steppin' woman like Old Lady Elrod.
"There was some people that expected a heap o' Dick after he married, but I never did. If a man can't be faithful to a woman before he marries her, he ain't likely to be faithful after he marries her. And shore enough the shine wasn't off o' Annie's weddin' clothes before Dick was back to his old ways, drinkin' and carryin' on with the women same as ever, and the first thing we knew, him and Annie had a big quarrel, and Old Man Bob had ordered him off the place. However, they made it up and went over to the old Squire's to live, and things went on well enough till Annie's baby was born. Dick had set his heart on havin' a boy, but it turned out a girl, and as soon as they told him, he never even asked how Annie was, but jest went out to the stable and saddled his horse and galloped off, and nobody seen him for two days. He needn't 'a' took on so, for the pore little thing didn't live but a week. Annie had convulsions over Dick's leavin' her that way, and the doctor said that was what killed the child. Annie never was the same after this. She grieved for her child and lost her good looks, and when she lost them, she lost Dick. It wasn't long before Dick was livin' with his father, and she with hers. At last he went out West; and in less than three years Annie died; and a good thing she did, for a more soured, disappointed woman couldn't 'a' been found anywhere.
"Well, all this time Milly Baker's baby was growin' in grace, you might say. And a finer child never was born. Milly had named him Richard, and nature had wrote his father's name all over him. He was the livin' image of Dick, all but the look in his eyes; that was Milly's. Milly worshiped him, and there was few children raised any carefuler and better than Milly Baker's boy; that was what we always called him. Milly was nothin' but a child herself when he was born, but all at once she appeared to turn to a woman; acted like one and looked like one. It ain't time, honey, that makes people old; it's experience. Some folks never git over bein' children, and some never has any childhood; and pore little Milly's was cut short by trouble. If she felt ashamed of herself or the child, nobody ever knew it. I never could tell whether it was lack of sense, or whether she jest looked at things different from the rest of us; but to see her walk in church holding little Richard by the hand, nobody ever would 'a' thought but what she was a lawful wife. No woman could 'a' behaved better'n she did, I'm bound to say. She got better lookin' all the time, but she was as steady and sober as if she'd been sixty years old. Parson Page said once that Milly Baker had more dignity than any woman, young or old, that he'd ever seen. It seems right queer to talk about dignity in a pore gyirl who'd made the misstep she'd made, but I reckon it was jest that that made us all come to treat her as if she was as good as anybody. People can set their own price on 'emselves, I've noticed; and if they keep it set, folks'll come up to it. Milly didn't seem to think that she had done anything wrong; and when she brought little Richard up for baptism there wasn't a dry eye in the church; and when she joined the church herself there wasn't anybody mean enough to say a word against it, not even Silas Petty.
"Squire Elrod give her the cottage rent free after her mother died, and betwixt nursin' and doin' fine needlework she made a good livin' for herself and the boy.
"Little Richard was a child worth workin' for from the start. Tall and straight as a saplin', and carried himself like he owned the earth, even when he was a little feller. It looked like all the good blood on both sides had come out in him, and there wasn't a smarter, handsomer boy in the county. The old Squire thought a heap of him, and nothin' but his pride kept him from ownin' the child outright and treatin' him like he was his own flesh and blood. Richard had an old head on young shoulders, though he was as full o' life as any boy; and by the time he was grown the old Squire trusted him with everything on the place and looked to him the same as if he'd been a settled man. After Old Lady Elrod died, he broke terrible fast, and folks used to say it was a pitiful sight to see him when he'd be watchin' Richard overseein' the hands and tendin' to things about the place. He'd lean on the fence, his hands tremblin' and his face workin', thinkin' about Dick and grievin' over him and wishin', I reckon, that Dick had been such a man as Milly's boy was.
"All these years nobody ever heard from Dick. Once in a while somebody'd come from town and say they'd seen somebody that had seen somebody else, and that somebody had seen Dick way out in California or Lord knows where, and that was all the news that ever come back. We'd all jest about made up our minds that he was dead, when one mornin', along in corn-plantin' time, the news was brought and spread over the neighborhood in no time that Dick Elrod had come home and was lyin' at the p'int of death. I remembered hearin' a hack go by on the pike the night before, and wondered to myself what was up. I thought, maybe, it was a runaway couple or some such matter, but it was pore Dick comin' back to his father's house, like the Prodigal Son, after twenty years. It takes some folks a long time, child, to git tired of the swine and the husks.
"Well, of course, it made a big commotion, and before we'd hardly taken it in, we heard that he'd sent for Milly, and her and Richard had gone together up to the big house.
"Jane Ann Petty was keepin' house for the old Squire, and she told us afterwards how it all come about.