"Oh, well, if you mean that," said Vilda argumentatively, "I don't call writin' poetry any great test of smartness. There ain't been a big fool in this village for years but could do somethin' in the writin' line. I guess it ain't any great trick, if you have a mind to put yourself down to it. For my part, I've always despised to see a great, hulkin' man, that could handle a hoe or a pitchfork, sit down and twirl a pen-stalk."
"Well, I ain't so sure. I guess the Lord hes his own way o' managin' things. We ain't all cal'lated to hoe pertaters nor yet to write poetry verses. There's as much dif'rence in folks 's there is in anybody. Now, I can take care of a dairy as well as the next one, 'n' nobody was ever hearn to complain o' my butter; but there was that lady in New York State that used to make flowers 'n' fruit 'n' graven images out o' her churnin's. You've hearn tell o' that piece she carried to the Centennial? Now, no sech doin's 's that ever come into my head. I've went on makin' round balls for twenty years: 'n', massy on us, don't I remember when my old butter stamp cracked, 'n' I couldn't get another with an ear o' corn on it, 'n' hed to take one with a beehive, why, I was that homesick I couldn't bear to look my butter 'n the eye! But that woman would have had a new picter on her balls every day, I shouldn't wonder! (For massy's sake, Maria, don't stan' stock still 'n' let the flies eat yer right up!) No, I tell yer, it takes all kinds o' folks to make a world. Now, I couldn't never read poetry. It's so dull, it makes me feel 's if I'd been trottin' all day in the sun! But there's folks that can stan' it, or they wouldn't keep on turnin' of it out. The children are nice children enough, but have they got any folks anywhere, 'n' what kind of folks, 'n' where'd they come from, anyhow: that's what we've got to find out, 'n' I guess it'll be consid'able of a chore!"
"I don't know but you're right. I thought some of sendin' Jabe to the city to-morrow."
"Jabe? Well, I s'pose he'd be back by 'nother spring; but who'd we get ter shovel us out this winter, seein' as there ain't more 'n three men in the whole village? Aunt Hitty says twenty-year engagements 's goin' out o' fashion in the big cities, 'n' I'm glad if they be. They'd 'a' never come in, I told her, if there'd ever been an extry man in these parts, but there never was. If you got holt o' one by good luck, you had ter keep holt, if 't was two years or twenty-two, or go without. I used ter be too proud ter go without; now I've got more sense, thanks be! Why don't you go to the city yourself, Vildy? Jabe Slocum ain't got sprawl enough to find out anythin' wuth knowin'."
"I suppose I could go, though I don't like the prospect of it very much. I haven't been there for years, but I'd ought to look after my property there once in a while. Deary me! it seems as if we weren't ever going to have any more peace."
"Mebbe we ain't," said Samantha, as they wound up the meeting-house hill; "but ain't we hed 'bout enough peace for one spell? If peace was the best thing we could get in this world, we might as well be them old cows by the side o' the road there. There ain't nothin' so peaceful as a cow, when you come to that!"
The two women went into the church more perplexed in mind than they would have cared to confess. During the long prayer (the minister could talk to God at much greater length than he could talk about Him), Miss Vilda prayed that the Lord would provide the two little wanderers with some more suitable abiding-place than the White Farm; and that, failing this, He would inform his servant whether there was anything unchristian in sending them to a comfortable public asylum. She then reminded Heaven that she had made the Foreign Missionary Society her residuary legatee (a deed that established her claim to being a zealous member of the fold), so that she could scarcely be blamed for not wishing to take two orphan children into her peaceful home.
Well, it is no great wonder that so faulty a prayer did not bring the wished-for light at once; but the ministering angels, who had the fatherless little ones in their care, did not allow Miss Vilda's mind to rest quietly. Just as the congregation settled itself after the hymn, and the palm-leaf fans began to sway in the air, a swallow flew in through the open window; and, after fluttering to and fro over the pulpit, hid itself in a dark corner, unnoticed by all save the small boys of the congregation, to whom it was, of course, a priceless boon. But Miss Vilda could not keep her wandering thoughts on the sermon any more than if she had been a small boy. She was anything but superstitious; but she had seen that swallow, or some of its ancestors, before.... It had flown into the church on the very Sunday of her mother's death.... They had left her sitting in the high-backed rocker by the window, the great family Bible and her spectacles on the little light-stand beside her.... When they returned from church, they had found their mother sitting as they left her, with a smile on her face, but silent and lifeless.... And through the glass of the spectacles, as they lay on the printed page, Vilda had read the words, "For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter;" had read them wonderingly, and marked the place with reverent fingers.... The swallow flew in again, years afterward.... She could not remember the day or the month, but she could never forget the summer, for it was the last bright one of her life, the last that pretty Martha ever spent at the White Farm.... And now here was the swallow again.... "For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter." Miss Vilda looked on the book and tried to follow the hymn; but passages of Scripture flocked into her head in place of good Dr. Watts's verses, and when the little melodeon played the interludes she could only hear:—
"Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, even Thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God."
"As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place."