“A widder with three children?” sez I.
“Yes, three beautiful little cherubs; I love them already from their mother’s description.”
“Why,” sez I, “Miss Piddock is related to Josiah on his own side, and we’ve been layin’ out to go and see her, but sunthin’ has hendered. She lived out West, and has only moved back a year or so ago. We’ve writ back and forth; and Josiah and I got it all planned to stop and see her,” sez I; “I, too, have been greatly took with her writings.” His handsome face grew earnest, he has perfect confidence in me, and sez he:
“I can trust you, after you have been there will you tell me what you think of her? Will you?” And sez he, “I feel that you will love her, adore her; for if she is so lovely away among strangers what a jewel she will be in the precious setting of her own beautiful home! She has described it to me, and I have loved Nestle Down jest from her description.”
I sez coolly, “Josiah and I hain’t goin’ to be sent out like spies to discover the land; why don’t you go yourself?”
“She don’t want me to visit her,” sez he; “she is so sensitive, so delicate, she has some reason I do not understand, and my duties to the hospital tie me here until my vacation, which seems an age. But my life’s happiness depends upon my decision,” sez he.
Well, I didn’t give no promises nor refuse ’em. What made me more lienitent to Laurence Marsh wuz that I, too, had such feelin’s of deep respect for Evangeline Piddock. I, too, had read with a beatin’ heart some of her poems on the beauty and sacredness of home and domestic happiness, her glorification of Mother Love and Duty, and at a relative’s I had seen some of her pictures and statuettes in stun, beautiful as a dream—she wuz truly a disciple of Art and Beauty and a Creator. And then—I heard his ardent words, I see the light in his eyes. And oh, the joys and pains and the dreams of youth, the raptures and the agonies! I could look back and feel ’em agin in memory. The impatience with Destiny, the hopes, the uncertainty, the roads that branch off in so many different ways before the hasty impatient feet. Setting at rest at eventide in the long cool shadows, don’t let us forget the blazing skies, the heart beats, the ardent hopes, the ambitions, the perplexing cares of the forenoon.
Well, if you’ll believe it, the very next Sunday after that Marion’s Pa married the Widder Lummis, stood up after meetin’ and married her in a good, sensible, middle-aged way, and brung her home, and Josiah and I wuz invited there the next week a-visitin’. We’re highly thought on in Jonesville.
I found Marion’s stepma quite a good lookin’ woman, full of animal sperits and dressed handsome; she seemed good enough to Marion on the outside, but I could see that home wuzn’t what it had been to Marion in any way; her new Ma wanted to go ahead and be mistress, and thought she had a right to, and she didn’t keep the house as Marion did; things wuzn’t dirty, but if the house resembled any poem at all it wuz a poem of Disorder and Tumult. She wanted the two boys and the twins to like her, and she humored ’em, gin ’em candy and indigestible stuff that Marion never approved of, but they did highly, and they seemed kinder weaned from Marion and took up with their good natered, indulgent new Ma. And of course Marion’s Pa, as wuz nateral, wuz all engrossed in his new wife; she wuz healthy, handsome, and a good cook. Poor Marion! in the new anthem they wuz all jinin’ in there didn’t seem to be any part for her voice. She looked like a mournin’ dove; my heart ached for her.
Towards night I see her leanin’ up against the west winder of the parlor lookin’ out sadly, and, though the settin’ sun wuz on her face, it couldn’t lighten the shadder on it. I went up to her and laid my hand on her shoulder, and I see then that her eyes had been fixed on the pretty cottage Dr. Marsh had jest bought, the prettiest place in Jonesville, a sort of a stun gray house settin’ back in its green trees with a big lawn like velvet in front, all dotted with flowering shrubs and handsome trees. But I never let on that I knew what she wuz lookin’ at. But I sez, as I laid my hand tenderly on her shoulder: