II
THE HOUSE THAT WAS A WEDDING FEE[ToC]
It was September, the sad month of the year before I heard the promised story of the house that was a wedding fee; for it was Aunt Jane's whim that, as a dramatic sequence, a visit to the house should follow the telling of the tale, and it was hard to find a convenient time for the happening of both events. Meanwhile, I was tantalized by the memory of that half-seen house at the end of the long avenue, and again and again I tried by adroit questions to draw from Aunt Jane the story about which my imagination hovered like a bee about a flower.
"Well," she finally remarked with smiling resignation, "I see there ain't any peace for me till that story's told. Ain't that Johnny Amos goin' by on horseback? Holler to him, child, and ask him to stop here on his way back and hitch old Nelly to the buggy for me. Tell him I'll dance at his weddin' if he'll do that favor for me.
"And now, while we're waitin' for Johnny to come, I'll tell all I can ricollect about that old house. Fetch my basket o' cyarpet-rags, and we'll sit out here on the porch. Here's a needle for you, too, child. If I can sew and talk at the same time, I reckon you can sew and listen. Jest mix your colors any way you please. I never made a cyarpet except the hit-or-miss kind."
I took my needle and began to sew, first a black, then a red, then a blue strip, but Aunt Jane showed no haste to begin her story.
"Goin' back sixty years," she remarked meditatively, "is like goin' up and rummagin' around in a garret. You don't know what you'll lay your hands on in the dark, and you can't be certain of findin' what you went after. I'm tryin' to think whereabouts I'd better begin so as to git to that old house the quickest."