“Lor’ now, Miss, ’ow am I ever to leave this place where I’ve been all these years? I thought yesterday as you said ’twas a mistake I’d made.”
“But alas, it wasn’t altogether a mistake,” Robinette had to confess sadly, her eyes filling with tears as she realized how she had only doubled her old friend’s disappointment. Then she sat forward and took Mrs. Prettyman’s hand in hers.
“Nursie dear,” she said, “I don’t want you 263 to grieve about leaving the old home, for it isn’t an awfully good one; the new one is going to be ever so much better!”
“That’s so, I’m sure, dearie, only ’tis new,” faltered Mrs. Prettyman. “If you’re spared to my age, Missie, you’ll find as new things scare you.”
“Ah, but not a new house, Nursie! Wait till I describe it! Everything strong and firm about it, not shaking in the storms as this one does; nice bright windows to let in all the sunshine; so no more ‘rheumatics’ and no more tears of pain in your dear old eyes!”
Robinette’s voice failed suddenly, for it struck her all in a moment that her glowing description of the new home seemed to have in it something prophetic. That bent little figure beside her, these shaking limbs and dim old eyes,––all this house of life, once so carefully builded, was crumbling again into the dust, and its tenant indeed wanted a new one, quite, quite different! A sob 264 rose in Robinette’s throat, but she swallowed it down and went on gaily.
“I’ve settled about another thing, too; you’re to have another plum tree, or life wouldn’t be the same thing to you. And you know they can transplant quite big trees now-a-days and make them grow wonderfully. Some one was telling me all about how it is done only a few days ago. They dig them up ever so carefully, and when they put them into the new hole, every tiny root is spread out and laid in the right direction in the ground, and patted and coaxed in, and made firm, and they just catch hold on the soil in the twinkle of an eye. Isn’t it marvellous? Well, I’ll have a fine new tree planted for you so cleverly that perhaps by next year you’ll be having a few plums, who knows? And the next year more plums! And the next year, jam!”
“’Twill be beautiful, sure enough,” said the old woman, kindling at last under the description of all these joys. “And do you 265 think, Missie, as the new cottage will really be curing of me rheumatics?”
“Why yes, Nurse. Whoever heard of rheumatism in a dry new house?”
“The house be new, but the rheumatics be old,” said Mrs. Prettyman sagely.