“Land alive, Cynthy,” exclaimed the former, happily. “I haven’t seen you in mercy knows when. Where are you keeping yourself?”
“Take the low willow rocker, Miss Allan,” urged Mrs. Robbins after the introduction was over, and she had helped lift the ancient dolman from Cynthy’s worn shoulders. Jean was hovering over the rocker delightedly. As she told the girls afterwards, Mother was just as dear and charming as if Cynthy had been the president of the Social Study Club back home.
“Thank ye kindly,” said Cynthy with a little sigh of relief. She stretched out her hands to the fire, looking from one to the other of them with a mingling of pride and appeal. Those scrawny hands with their knotted knuckles and large veins. Jean thought of what Cousin Roxy had said, that Cynthy’s hands had been so beautiful. She ran upstairs to find the rose. It was in a big cretonne covered “catch-all” box, tucked away with odds and ends of silks and laces, a large hand-made French rose of silk and velvet, its petals shaded delicately from palest pink at the heart to deep crimson at the outer rim. There was a black lace veil in the box too that seemed to go with it, so Jean took them both back downstairs, and Cynthy’s face was a study as she looked at them. She rocked to and fro gently, a smile of perfect content on her face, her head a bit on one side.
“Ain’t it sightly, Roxy?” she said. “And those shades always did become me so. I suppose it’s foolish of me, but I just needed that rose to hearten me up for the trip to Moosup. I had a letter from the town clerk.” She fumbled in the folds of her skirt for it. “He says I haven’t paid my taxes in over two years, and the town can’t let them go on any longer, and anyhow, he thinks it would be better for me to let the house and six acres be sold for the taxes, and for me to go down to the town farm. My heart’s nigh broken over it.”
Cousin Roxy was sitting very straight in her chair, her shoulders squared in fighting trim, her eyes bright as a squirrel’s behind her spectacles.
“What do you calculate to do about it, Cynthy?”
“Well, I had a lot of good rag rugs saved up, and I thought mebbe I could sell them for something, and some more rags ready for weaving, and there’s some real fine old china that belonged to old Aunt Deborah Bristow, willow pattern and Rose Windsor, and the two creamer sets in copper glaze and silver gilt. I’ll have to sell the whole lot, most likely. It’s twenty-four dollars.”
Jean was busily sewing the rose in place on the old black bonnet and draping the lace veil over it. Mrs. Robbins’ eyes flashed a signal to Cousin Roxy and the latter caught it.
“Cynthy,” she said briskly, “you get all warmed up and rested here, and I’ll drive down and see Fred Bennet. He’s the other selectman with the Judge, and I guess between them, we can stop any such goings on. It isn’t going to cost the town any for your board and keep, anybody that’s been as good a neighbor as you have in your day, helping folks right and left. I shan’t have it. Which would you rather do, stay on at your own place, or come over to me for a spell? I’ll keep you busy sewing on my carpet rags, and we’ll talk over old times. I was just telling Mrs. Robbins and Jean what a lovely dancer you used to be, and what pretty hands you had.”
Cynthy’s faded hazel eyes blinked wistfully behind her steel rimmed “specs.” Her hand went up to hide the trembling of her lips, but before she could answer, the tears came freely, and she rocked herself to and fro, with Jean kneeling beside her petting her, and Mrs. Robbins hurrying for a hot cup of tea.