Chapter Eight.
Mrs Stone.
Mrs Stone did not tell her story straight on as she sat waiting there on the mountain side, but with many a break and pause, and with now and then an exclamation of wonder or indignation at her own foolishness, or the foolishness of some one else. But she told it quietly—making no moan for herself, though the troubles of her life had been neither light nor few.
“Yes, I have had a share of trouble, but no more than my share; and, take it altogether, I have had considerable enjoyment, too. There was Eunice—I could never tell the comfort I took with her when she was a little child. I was only a child myself—little more than twelve or thirteen years old—when my sister Myra let me go to take care of Eunice for a spell, when she came home, a motherless baby, to live with her grandmother Peabody on the hill. Her grandmother was a busy woman in those days, with many duties at home and elsewhere; and Eunice was a healthy, happy little creature; and after awhile she was mostly left to me night and day for years; and I did my very best for her, and we were very happy together till your father married again and took her home.
“I ought by rights to have gone with her, as they all wanted to have me; but sister Myra was married by this time, and lived on father’s old place, and she wanted me to come and make my home with her, as I had a good right to do, seeing the farm was as much mine as hers, by our father’s will. So I tried it a spell. She had two babies by this time, and I was good with babies, and could have helped her, and been contented after awhile.
“But Ezra Stone, Myra’s husband, wasn’t—well, he was peculiar. He was close—he came from a stingy family, and I don’t suppose he was more to blame for his stinginess than other folks are for being extravagant—he inherited it. Well, he thought I wasn’t needed there: he thought his wife hadn’t any too much to do with her babies, and her cows, and her housework—no more than other folks had, he said; and he said I might do better for myself some where else. And he kept at it in his worrying way, till he rather wore us out at last. And so, when Squire Peabody came over one day to say that his wife was sick and much in need of help, Myra said I had better go. I’d have a better time than I’d ever be likely to have in her house; and maybe after awhile I might be able to help her and the children more than I could now. So I went, and I stayed there till—well, till I was married.”
There was a long pause here, and Mrs Stone spoke very softly when she went on again.
“I didn’t see so much of Myra after that, as I ought to have done. I used to see her Sundays at meetings, and we met at some of the neighbours’ houses sometimes; but I did not go often to her house. I knew she wasn’t very happy. She was different from her husband. She had a big heart and a free hand, and hated his small ways. She was nervous too, and high strung; and when she had anything on her mind, it had to come out when occasion called for it. Yes, she could say hard things!
“But what she said touched her husband just as the water in the brook touches the stones in its bed. It never moved him; and she wore herself out at last. She had held out through a good deal for the sake of her boys; and when she gave up at last, the end was pretty near. I was with her the last few weeks. She hadn’t strength to say much, but it was—‘My boys, Ruby! Keep them in mind and help them all you can,’ whenever we were alone together.
“I think if she had asked me to come and take care of them, and make my home with them, I must have done it. But she didn’t. Ezra’s mother was living there then, and his sister Susan, and I wasn’t needed. But I did pity those pretty slender boys, and the baby between them all. But I couldn’t do anything about it, and I didn’t see much of them for a good while.