CHAPTER XXIII
GRANNY WILLIAM’S NARRATIONS
DAVID JOSLIN did not come to renew his invitation to Marcia Haddon to ride into the mountains. She saw him no more. Nor did she herself even yet keep her oft-renewed promise to depart at once for the North. Moody and silent, aloof and unhappy, this passed from one resolve to another until one day Granny Williams, by chance, offered a means for carrying out her own self-formed plan of a visit deeper into the hills.
“I sartinly would enj’y it, child, fer to go back in thar a ways with ye,” said Granny. “Three or four of my boys lives up in Redbird, an’ I hain’t been in thar fer a long time. We could ride up in one day an’ stay a month, fer as that, if we wanted.”
“Aren’t you afraid to go?” asked Marcia Haddon, hesitating, knowing that the old lady would never see her eightieth birthday again.
“Afeerd? Why should I be afeerd, womern? I reckon I’ll never see the day when I’ll be afeerd to ride a mewel that fer an’ back, if I want ter.” And, indeed, when on the following day they embarked for their journey, the old dame herself sat carelessly, with one skinny knee across the horn of her man’s saddle, thrust almost up into her face as she perched, a bag on one arm and a basket on the other, and smoked her pipe in perfect contentment as she rode.
“Ye like enough don’t know much about mewels,” said she, “bein’ a furrin womern. Mewels is best fer the mountings. They’ll just walk along if ye leave ‘em be. All ye got to do is to foller right behind me, an’ keep yore beast a-walkin’ right peart.”
The full foliage of the vernal season now covered all the mountains. The stream, idling and loitering, broke into rapids over rock ledges, or swum out into wide, still pools under the far-flung fringes of the elms and beaches. As they rode, Granny Williams told the story of this place or that.