“No,” said Sidney, “but I know her by sight. She’s got a stern face.”
“Starn! You’d be starn-looking too if you’d come through what Sal Winder has. First she married Joshua Winder; he was a bad lot if ever there was one, and after they’d been married ten years and had four children, what does he do but up and run away with a bound girl at Mr. Phillipses, a red-cheeked, bold-faced critter she was. Well, Sal never said nothin’. She was left with a mortgage and the four children and a roof that leaked. I don’t s’pose anyone ever knowed the shifts Sal was put to to bring up them young ones and work that place and make both ends meet and keep the roof of the old house from falling in. Mebbe you’ve remarked the old house? It’s got a white rosebush by the door, and blue ragged-sailors in the yard, and the pile of bricks beyond was once a smoke house. She had all her hams and bacon stole one year to make things easier for her. Well, her oldest boy was the most remarkable young one that Dole ever see. Joshua his name was, after his father, but that’s all the likeness there was between the two of them. That boy was jist grit and goodness clean through! And the way he helped his mother! There wasn’t a foot of that old place they didn’t work, and prices were good then, and in about six years Sal got the mortgage paid. She gave a dollar to the plate in church the next Sunday. Some held ’twas done to show off, but Sal wasn’t that stripe of woman. ’Twas a thank-offering, that’s what it was.
“Well, next year Sal built a barn, and the year after the new house was begun. The house went on slowly, for Sal wanted to pay as she went along. Well, at last the house was built and painted real tasty, and one day I was over there to visit a spell, and Sal says, ‘Joshua has gone to pay the painter for the house painting,’ she says; ‘it’s a sort of celebration for us and we’re having ducks for supper. I hope you’ll stay and help us celebrate.’ Then she went on to say how good Joshua had been, which she didn’t need to tell me, for all Dole knowed he was perfect if ever there was a perfect son. So jest after the lamps was lighted, in come Joshua. He was tall and slim; he favoured Sal in his looks; he had worked so hard ever since he was little that his hands had a turrible knotty look like an old man’s, and he had a sort of responsible expression to his face. Well, we was all setting at supper and Joshua had cut up the ducks and we was all helped, and Sal says, ‘Now make your supper all of ye. We’ve had a hard row to hoe, Joshua and me, but we’ve kep’ it clear o’ weeds, and I guess we’re goin’ to have a harvest o’ peace and quiet after the grubbin’.’ Joshua looked up at his mother, and I never seen two people more happy to look at. Sal was real talkative that night, and she says:
“‘Well, Temperance, I’m right glad you’re here to-night. I’m perfectly content this night,’ she says. The words wasn’t out of her mouth till I saw Joshua give a shiver—like a person with a chill in his back.
“‘Have you got a chill, Joshua?’ I says, and he laughed quite unconsarned, and he says, ‘Yes, I seem to have the shivers.’
“Four days after that Joshua Winder lay dead in the new house.... My! I mind how his hands looked in his coffin. His face was young, but his hands looked as if he’d done his heft o’ work. No, never say you are perfectly content. It’s turrible dangerous.”
Sidney’s sensitive heart was wrung by the homely story.
“Oh, Temperance,” he said, “why did you tell me that?” She looked at him as a surgeon might regard one whom his healing lancet had pained.
“Because,” said Temperance, “because it’s a tempting o’ Providence to say or to think you are content. I ain’t superstitious, but I’d rather hear the bitterest complainings as to hear anyone say that.”
“And yet,” said Sidney, “I should think the Lord would be pleased to see people happy, each in his own way.”