"Grandfather used to say that tanners always kept tavern, and I think it seems to be a good deal so with millers," observed Mrs. Fairchild. "However, you needn't be troubled for me, Eben; I haven't felt anything like so well since I left the farm as I do now. I guess the air here is rather better than it is at our house. The house stands higher, you see."
"Maybe so," said Eben, smiling. He did not contradict his mother, but he could not help thinking that the improvement in her health was due to something else than the situation of the house.
While upon the farm, Mrs. Fairchild had been used to an active life, full of cares and interests. She was an excellent dairy-woman and a very successful raiser of poultry. "As uncertain as young turkeys," seemed to be a proverb that hardly applied to hers, she was so uniformly successful—or, as she said, lucky—with her birds, and she always had eggs to sell when eggs were scarce and high. Since the shock of her husband's death and the loss of her property she had led a very different life. The work of her small household would not have sufficed to keep her busy, even if the children, in mistaken kindness, had not taken it almost entirely off her hands, and left her nothing save to sit still and brood over her sorrows. She really suffered from want of exercise, and was in considerable danger of falling into a state of confirmed ill-health for want of anything else to do.
Since she had been with Mrs. Antis all this was changed. Mrs. Antis was very sick, and needed a great deal done for her. Mrs. Fairchild went up and down stairs a dozen times a day for one thing and another. Then, as she said, they kept a kind of tavern, for Mr. Antis was always bringing people home to dinner and supper. Mary was not very skilful in the finer kind of cookery, but she was anxious to improve. Mrs. Fairchild was a capital cook, and was wont to boast that she could make anything which could be made out of flour and eggs. She was as ready to teach as Mary was to learn, and the result was that Mr. Antis declared that he had never lived so well in his life.
Besides all her exercise indoors, Mrs. Fairchild found time to run down home almost every day to see Flora and look after her young ducks, now happily hatched and swimming in the outlet. The result of all was that the good woman grew once more cheerful, good-natured, and ready to look on the bright side of things, and to think that, after all, they might do very well, and so one cloud which had hung over the little family passed away.
Having once got into the way of nursing, however, Mrs. Fairchild seemed likely to be unable to get out of it. She had been at home only a week when Squire Dennison came after her for his wife.
Mrs. Fairchild hesitated, and said "Do tell!" a great many times, and didn't know what the children would do without her, but was at last prevailed upon to go, at least for a few days, till somebody else should be found. The result was that she stayed some time and came home in the best of spirits, with thirty dollars in her purse and a big box of honey, which Mrs. Dennison had insisted upon her taking "for the children."
"How well you look!" said Flora.
"Well, I do feel first-rate. I think nursing agrees with me—I really do—and if it wasn't for leaving you alone, Flossy, I should almost be tempted to make a business of it. Only think! If I could earn enough to help Eben through college, after all."
"I don't believe Eben would be willing to have you do that," said Flora.