"Well," I sighed, "I'm glad Phenie is going to marry so good a fellow as Columbus."
"Y—yes," she answered, condescendingly, "he's a good feller, Columbus is. He don't drink or smoke, an' he's mighty savin'."
I remarked here, as on other occasions, that Mrs. Angel regarded this being "savin'" as a purely masculine virtue.
"He's give Phenie most a hundred dollars a'ready," she continued, complacently. "They ain't no gal 'round as 'll have nicer things 'n Phenie."
A fortnight later the newly wedded pair called upon me. Phenie looked very sweet in her bridal finery, but there was something in her face which I did not like. It meant neither peace nor happiness. She looked older. There were some hard lines around her lips, and the childish expression of her lovely eyes had given place to a restless, absent look. Her husband was serenely unconscious of anything wanting—unconscious, indeed, of everything but his absolute bliss, and his new shiny hat. He wore a lavender necktie, now, and gloves of the same shade, which were painfully tight, and, with the hat, would have made life a burden to any but the bridegroom of a week's standing. Phenie had little to say, but Columbus was jubilantly loquacious.
"I've gone out o' butcherin' fur good an' all," he declared, emphatically. "Phenie didn't like it, an' no more do I. Hucksterin' is more to my mind, ma'am. It's cleaner an'—an' more genteel, ma'am. I've got a good stan', an' I mean to keep Phenie like a lady, ma'am!"
She lived but a year after this. She and her baby were buried in one grave. That was five years ago. Columbus still wears a very wide hat-band of crape, and mourns her sincerely.
Her death was a heavy blow to her mother, whose grief is borne with constant repining and unreasoning reflections. The fountains of her eyes overflow at the mere utterance of the girl's name.
"The doctors 'lowed 'twas consumption as ailed her," she often repeats, "but I ain't never got red o' thinkin' 'twas trouble as killed her. I used ter think, Mis' Lawrence," she says, with lowered voice, "that she hadn't never got over thinkin' of that man as fooled her so! I wish I could see him oncet! Says she ter me, time an' agin', 'Ma,' says she, 'I reckon I ain't a-goin' ter live long. I'm right young ter die, but I do' know as I keer!' says she."