“I’m so sorry to have troubled you,” Brooke began. “I wished to see Mrs. Enoch Fenton, and Miss Keith said that it was the first house before the cross-roads, but I must have misunderstood.”
“And so it is, dear. I’m Mrs. Fenton.” Then, as she read Brooke’s puzzled expression: “Oh, I see, Keith didn’t tell you that I use wheels instead of feet. Come right in; see, Tatters is quite at home here, and he knows where my cooky drawer is just as well as any child in the neighbourhood,” and, jerking a strap that she held in her hand, which was also fastened to the door handle, she closed it behind her guest even before Brooke realized and apologized for not doing it herself.
Quick as a flash the chair was turned, and travelled across the square hall, which also served as a summer sitting room, into a kitchen, cheerful and neat as wax, while as Brooke followed, her senses now keyed to the unusual, she noticed that not only had the door-ways been widened, but that all the furniture, tables, dresser, chest of drawers, and even the stove itself were below the usual level.
“Choose a chair,” said Mrs. Fenton, smiling brightly as she brought herself to a stop close to the sunny southwest bay window, where a wide shelf with a deep ledge, containing sewing materials and various garments in process of manufacture, showed it to be her habitual nook.
As Brooke drew a splint-bottomed rocker nearer to her hostess, she noticed that, though the white hair and thin face had at first given the impression of greater age, Mrs. Fenton was not more than sixty-five, while the intelligence of her expression and brightness of eye might well belong to a woman of fifty, and although her lower limbs seemed small and were wrapped in a shawl, her arms and chest were full and muscular.
“You don’t tell me your name, but I make it that you are Adam Lawton’s daughter, whom Keith has been expecting and worrying about these ten days past. She told me about your father’s money loss and shock, and how he was coming back home; and I’ve been real interested to hear, because you see, dearie, Adam and I went to school together fifty odd years ago, and to the day he left we were always a tie in spelling matches, and now here we are again, like as not matched together as cripples. Tell me all about him, dear, if it don’t hurt you. I’ve found, these eight years since I’ve had my discipline, that exchanging experiences with others likely situated is apt to make one credit a lot of things to the mercy side of the record that would never have been set down, if we hadn’t been brought face to face with other folks’ misery, and so forced to take count of stock, so to speak. And please, before we begin and have a comfortable chat, give Tatters a sugar cooky out of the drawer there (I never before set eyes on a dog so fond of sweet cake,—his mouth is fairly watering),—no, not that little drawer, the peppermints and maple candy are in there, though you might like a bit of that to nibble on,—the second drawer;” and Brooke, after giving the expectant dog his cake, drew still closer to the wheel-chair, and, such was the spell of single-hearted sympathy, quite as a matter of course she told Mrs. Fenton, naturally and frankly, of both her hopes and fears, ending with her desire to get Mrs. Peck to “accommodate” until she should have learned to manage alone.
“You dear child!” exclaimed the lame woman, laying her work-hardened hand on Brooke’s soft, shapely one as she ended, and looking at her through the reminiscent tears that would gather on her lashes, “I take it a special thought of Providence, your coming to me, for who has had to learn, more than I, how to keep housework in hand?—and as to Mrs. Peck, she will be here to-night, as Enoch, being Deacon, must sleep over at Gordon, where the Con-Association meets.
“Listen, and I’ll tell you of my trouble quickly as may be, because what’s over and gone best not be dug too deep, except for the planting of future seeds of grace. Eight years ago this winter I was down at my daughter’s house in Gilead (she being the only one of six left me outside God’s Acre), tending her first-born. All around the well was laid with great cobbles, I slipped, and having a heavy pail in hand could not save myself, and hurt my spine, and it paralyzed my legs.
“They brought me home, and weeks and months went by. Enoch had the best doctors that summer over from Gordon, but nothing could be done to liven me; and then I knew that I must lie there bed-ridden, or be propped in a sick-chair for life, and leave my work undone for others. Oh, it was bitter, and I sorely rebelled to see a hired woman in my place, and father only half cared for. Then came fall of the year, and one day father brought in Doctor Russell, who had come up to stop on Windy Hill with Robert Stead for the shooting. He asked father to go away and leave him alone with me. Then he looked me over, bent all my joints that would bend, and, after listening to my heart, sat in the big chair by the bed (I can see him now just as plain), and said: ‘What troubles you the most, Mrs. Fenton? What is your worst suffering, and what do you most wish?’