It is to be feared that Mrs. Webster, lately come from more impersonal atmospheres to that of Ackerton, made small effort to discourage the revelations which it not seldom befell her to hear. On the contrary, she made it a point to regard them as among the roses which garnish the rather thorny path of young divines and their wives.
“A friendship like that is charming,” she remarked. “It is not many that survive the perils of childhood. You are both fortunate in having such constant friends.”
“H’m! It’s a pity she don’t see it!” exclaimed Miss Cockerill somewhat grimly. “Like as not she’ll tell Jonas Lane to go back out West.”
“Jonas Lane?” echoed Mrs. Webster with diplomatic interrogation. “Mr. Lane? I don’t seem to remember that name.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” agreed Miss Cockerill promptly. “His family’s all dead, like the rest of ours, and he went away twenty years ago—after he’d proposed to Martha the first time.”
“O!” exclaimed Mrs. Webster with discreet non-committal. But there was that in the regard she cast upon Miss Cockerill which did not deter that lady from continuing:
“He’s only been back twice since. That was when he proposed to her the second and third times. Now I s’pose he’s doing it the fourth.”
She looked out of the window again, at the house in which so momentous an event should be taking place. The house gave no hint, however, of being the abode of passion. It stood back in its maple-shaded yard, more trim and respectable in its clap-boarded dove-colour than a thing of nature, but as indifferent to human palpitations. The eyes of both ladies devoted to it an interval of silence. Then Miss Cockerill turned once more to her companion:
“I don’t see how she can refuse him this time. You see the first time she had her father an’ mother and Anne. Her father was real sickly, and Anne took after him. They both lay abed for years. Father Waring did because he fell from the hay loft. But Anne did because her father did, I guess. Anyhow, when Jonas first proposed to Martha, twenty years ago, she said she liked him well enough but that she couldn’t leave her folks while they needed her. So Jonas went out West, he was that provoked. He did mighty well, too. He went into lumber, and he’s a rich man now. But he didn’t forget Martha, for all that. He was always as faithful as you’d want to see—from the time he was a boy and we all went to school together.”
Miss Cockerill let her eye return to the dove-coloured house with a reminiscent light which quickened Mrs. Webster’s interest.