The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine

by Frank R. Stockton

"Mrs. Lecks!" exclaimed her friend, in surprise, "don't you intend goin' out this afternoon?"

"No," said Mrs. Lecks. "I've seen all I want to see, an' I'm goin' to stay in the house an' keep quiet."

"Isn't Mr. Dusante goin' out this afternoon?" asked Mrs. Aleshine.

Mrs. Lecks laid her knitting in her lap; then she took off her spectacles, folded them, and placed them beside the ball of yarn, and, turning her chair around, she faced her friend. "Barb'ry Aleshine," said she, speaking very deliberately, "has any such a thing got into your mind as that I'm settin' my cap at Mr. Dusante?"

"I don't say you have, an' I don't say you haven't," answered Mrs. Aleshine, her fat hands folded on her knees, and her round face shining from under her new bonnet with an expression of hearty good will; "but this I will say,—an' I don't care who hears it,—that if you was to set your cap at Mr. Dusante, there needn't nobody say anythin' ag'in' it, so long as you are content. He isn't what I'd choose for you, if I had the choosin', for I'd git one with an American name an' no islands. But that's neither here nor there, for you're a grown woman an' can do your own choosin'. An' whether there's any choosin' to be done is your own business, too, for it's full eleven years sence you've been done with widder fixin's; an' if Mr. Lecks was to rise up out of his grave this minute, he couldn't put his hand on his heart an' say that you hadn't done your full duty by him, both before an' after he was laid away. An' so, if you did want to do choosin', an' made up your mind to set your cap at Mr. Dusante, there's no word to be said. Both of you is ripe-aged an' qualified to know your own minds, an' both of you is well off enough, to all intents an' purposes, to settle down together, if so inclined. An' as to his sister, I don't expect she will be on his hands for long. An' if you can put up with an adopted mother-in-law, that's your business, not mine; though I allus did say, Mrs. Lecks, that if you'd been 'Piscopalian, you'd been Low-church."

"Is that all?" said Mrs. Lecks.

"Yes," replied the other; "it's all I have to say jus' now, though more might come to me if I gave my mind to it."

"Well, then," said Mrs. Lecks, "I've somethin' to say on this p'int, and I'm very glad Mr. Craig is here to hear it. If I had a feelin' in the direction of Mr. Dusante that he was a man, though not exactly what I might wish, havin' somethin' of foreign manners, with ties in the Sandwich Islands, which I shouldn't have had so if I'd had the orderin' of it, who was still a Christian gentleman,—as showed by his acts, not his words,—a lovin' brother, an' a kind an' attentive son by his own adoption, and who would make me a good husband for the rest of our two lives, then I'd go and I'd set my cap at him—not bold nor flauntin' nor unbecomin' to a woman of my age, but just so much settin' of it at him that if he had any feelin's in my direction, and thought, although it was rather late in life for him to make a change, that if he was goin' to do it he'd rather make that change with a woman who had age enough, and experience enough, in downs as well as ups, and in married life as well as single, to make him feel that as he got her so he'd always find her, then I say all he'd have to do would be to come to me an' say what he thought, an' I'd say what I thought, an' the thing would be settled, an' nobody in this world need have one word to say, except to wish us joy, an' then go along and attend to their own business.

"But now I say to you, Barb'ry Aleshine, an' just the same to you, Mr. Craig, that I haven't got no such feelin's in the direction of Mr. Dusante, an' I don't intend to set my cap at him; an' if he wore such a thing, and set it at me, I'd say to him, kind, though firm, that he could put it straight again as far as I was concerned, an' that if he chose to set it at any other woman, if the nearest an' dearest friend I have on earth, I'd do what I could to make their married lives as happy as they could be under the circumstances, and no matter what happened, I wouldn't say one word, though I might think what I pleased. An' now you have it, all straight and plain: if I wanted to set caps, I'd set 'em; and if I didn't want to set 'em, I wouldn't. I don't want to, and I don't."

And, putting on her spectacles, she resumed her knitting.