“Maybe they’ve stopped down to the Lane’s and have walked around the meadow path,” ventured Hope Snippin. “The other day when I was fixin’ up Mis’ Lane’s black gown, changing the buttons and such like to turn it from just Sunday best to mourning, I heard her tell Mis’ Jedd that, as there was no convenience for gettin’ up a proper meal down to Aunt Jimmy’s, seein’ as nothing must be touched until the will was read, she’d asked all the folks concerned to dinner—a roast-beef dinner with custards—at her house so’s they could be comfortable and stable their teams, and then walk right around short cut to the other house after. You see the two farms meets the road separate, like the two heels of a horseshoe, and then join by going back of the doctor’s hill woods. My father was sayin’ last night if those two farms and the wood lot went together, they’d be something worth while,” and Miss Snippin smiled pleasantly as if she thought she had propitiated Mrs. Slocum by her news.
“Then you knew all the while they wouldn’t come by here and never told me, though seein’ me slavin’ over that cake,” snapped Mrs. Slocum. “I wish you’d mind your work closer; you’re makin’ that front breadth up stain out.”
“But it runs clean through,” pleaded the dressmaker, miserably.
“Depend upon it,” Mrs. Slocum muttered to herself, not heeding the protest, “she’s made sure of that farm, or she wouldn’t risk the cost of a roast dinner for a dozen folks if she wasn’t.”
******
Meanwhile this dinner had been eaten and the party, headed by the lawyer and the teacher, had gone through the sweet June fields to Aunt Jimmy’s house and seated themselves upon the stiff-backed, fore-room chairs that were ranged in a long row, as if the company expected to play “Go to Jerusalem.”
Outside, the bees were humming in the syringa bushes while the cat-birds and robins, unmolested, were holding a festival in the great strawberry bed, for to-day there was no one to see that the birds “kept moving” after the usual custom, as the hired man on returning from taking eggs to market had gone to sleep in the hay barn, knowing that the stern voice of the old lady in rubber boots and sunbonnet would not disturb his dreams.
******
“Hem,” the lawyer cleared his throat and read the usual preliminaries about “last will and testament, sound mind,” etc., “paying of just debts,” etc., in a clear but rapid voice that grew gradually solemn and important, until, as the pith of the matter was reached, every word was separated from its neighbour, and the buzzing of a fly on the window-pane seemed an unbearable noise.
“I give and bequeath to Amelia, the wife of William Jedd, doctor of medicine in this town, the sum of two thousand dollars, because I think she may need it owing to her husband’s slack way of collecting bills.”