It had been that way for three years, ever since the autumn that her mother had died; and her father, who had followed his wife in everything, followed her to the grave a month later.
His last words to his daughter had been: "I'm sorry to leave you alone, Jenny, but I'd feel better if only I'd left you shingled. Your mother and me was laying up and laying up ever since we got married. We bought the house and field, paid off the mortgage and gave you good schooling. We are furnished up as well as most o' the neighbors, but when your mother's health got slim and my strength begun to fail, we couldn't seem to get any farther than meat, drink, and clothes for the three of us. The buildings couldn't be kept up, that was the long and short of it."
"I know, I know, Father. Haven't I seen how hard you tried?"
"Now I'm on my death-bed," said the old man. "There's money enough in the bank to buy the shingles, but God knows whether you can afford to hire a man to put 'em on, labor's so scarce and so high."
"Don't worry, Father! I don't want your last days troubled with fears about me and the roof. I'm twenty-two and I can earn my living somehow, somewhere!"
"'Tisn't so easy to earn your living and keep your buildings shingled too!" sighed her father.
"Maybe not, but I'll do it, in course of time!" said Jenny stoutly. "I've heard enough, all my life, about shingles; also about clapboards and paint. There isn't a young man in the neighborhood that I'd want to go to church with, but if one of them should ever chance to ask me to have him, I'd say: 'Shingle the house and I'll say yes!'"
The girl's father smiled in spite of his pain as he whispered: "Don't be too easy when it comes to bargaining, Jenny! Stiperlate first quality cedar shingles, him to buy 'em as well as put 'em on! You're worth it!"
"I shall never have a chance to 'stiperlate,'" thought Jenny, as she went to the kitchen to make gruel; and, as a matter of fact, although Jenny was good to look upon, and had an acre of timber land that would bring in something, fifteen years later, no lovelorn swain had offered to take her and her leaky house for better, for worse.
Later on there were other reasons why Jenny had no opportunity to "stiperlate." The anxious and dreary months went on relentlessly after her father's death, when new misfortunes descended upon her—an accident—unskillful treatment, too long delayed—finally, the loss of a foot—a crutch—eternal lameness. No wonder, as she dragged herself about the house and little garden before she had had time to accustom herself to her infirmity, that Riverboro sympathetically called her "Creeping Jenny." Her nearest neighbor, Mrs. Day, a widow, lived within easy walking distance (it seemed longer when you limped!), and the village itself was only a quarter of a mile away, so she did not lack an occasional call, the offer of an errand or message, and often a drive to church, made wretched by the difficulty of mounting and descending the wagon, with the added mortification of limping into a rear pew.