It was sun-down now; Miss Vilda and Jabez Slocum had gone to Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, and Samantha was looking for Timothy to go to the store with her on some household errands. She had seen the children go into the garden a half hour before, Timothy walking gravely, with his book before him, Gay blowing over the grass like a feather, and so she walked towards the summer-house.
Timothy was not there, but little Lady Gay was having a party all to herself, and the scene was such a pretty one that Samantha stooped behind the lattice and listened.
There was a table spread for four, with bits of broken china and shells for dishes, and pieces of apple and gingerbread for the feast. There were several dolls present (notably one without any head, who was not likely to shine at a dinner party), but Gay's first-born sat in her lap; and only a mother could have gazed upon such a battered thing and loved it. For Gay took her pleasures madly, and this faithful creature had shared them all; but not having inherited her mother's somewhat rare recuperative powers, she was now fit only for a free bed in a hospital,—a state of mind and body which she did not in the least endeavor to conceal. One of her shoe-button eyes dangled by a linen thread in a blood-curdling sort of way; her nose, which had been a pink glass bead, was now a mere spot, ambiguously located. Her red worsted lips were sadly raveled, but that she did not regret, "for it was kissin' as done it." Her yarn hair was attached to her head with safety-pins, and her internal organs intruded themselves on the public through a gaping wound in the side. Never mind! if you have any curiosity to measure the strength of the ideal, watch a child with her oldest doll. Rags sat at the head of the dinner-table, and had taken the precaution to get the headless doll on his right, with a view to eating her gingerbread as well as his own,—doing no violence to the proprieties in this way, but rather concealing her defects from a carping public.
"I tell you sompfin' ittle Mit Vildy Tummins," Gay was saying to her battered offspring. "You 's doin' to have a new ittle sit-ter to-mowowday, if you 's a dood ittle dirl an does to seep nite an kick, you ser-weet ittle Vildy Tummins!" (All this punctuated with ardent squeezes fraught with delicious agony to one who had a wound in her side!) "Vay fink you 's worn out, 'weety, but we know you isn't, don' we, 'weety? An I'll tell you nite ittle tory to-night, tause you isn't seepy. Wunt there was a ittle day hen 'at tole a net an' laid fir-teen waw edds in it, an bime bye erleven or seventeen ittle chits f'ew out of 'em, an Mit Vildy 'dopted 'em all! In 't that a nite tory, you ser-weet ittle Mit Vildy Tummins?"
Samantha hardly knew why the tears should spring to her eyes as she watched the dinner party,—unless it was because we can scarcely look at little children in their unconscious play without a sort of sadness, partly of pity and partly of envy, and of longing too, as for something lost and gone. And Samantha could look back to the time when she had sat at little tables set with bits of broken china, yes, in this very summer-house, and little Martha was always so gay, and David used to laugh so! "But there was no use in tryin' to make folks any dif'rent, 'specially if they was such nat'ral born fools they couldn't see a hole in a grindstun 'thout hevin' it hung on their noses!" and with these large and charitable views of human nature, Samantha walked back to the gate, and met Timothy as he came out of the orchard. She knew then what he had been doing. The boy had certain quaint thoughts and ways that were at once a revelation and an inspiration to these two plain women, and one of them was this. To step softly into the side orchard on pleasant evenings, and without a word, before or afterwards, to lay a nosegay on Martha's little white doorplate. And if Miss Vilda chanced to be at the window he would give her a quiet little smile, as much as to say, "We have no need of words, we two!" And Vilda, like one of old, hid all these doings in her heart of hearts, and loved the boy with a love passing knowledge.
Samantha and Timothy walked down the hill to the store. Yes, David Milliken was sitting all alone on the loafer's bench at the door, and why wasn't he at prayer-meetin' where he ought to be? She was glad she chanced to have on her clean purple calico, and that Timothy had insisted on putting a pink Ma'thy Washington geranium in her collar, for it was just as well to make folks' mouth water whether they had sense enough to eat or not.
"Who is that sorry-looking man that always sits on the bench at the store, Samanthy?"
"That's David Milliken."
"Why does he look so sorry, Samanthy?"
"Oh, he's all right. He likes it fust-rate, wearin' out that hard bench settin' on it night in 'n' night out, like a bump on a log! But, there, Timothy, I've gone 'n' forgot the whole pepper, 'n' we're goin' to pickle seed cowcumbers to-morrer. You take the lard home 'n' put it in the cold room, 'n' ondress Gay 'n' git her to bed, for I've got to call int' Mis' Mayhew's goin' along back."