“Well,” said Hannah Berry, “two old maids in the family is about enough, accordin' to my way of thinkin'.”
“It's better to be an old maid than to marry somebody you don't want, jest for the sake of bein' married,” retorted Sarah Barnard, fiercely.
The two sisters clashed like two thorny bushes of one family in a gale the whole afternoon. The two daughters sewed silently, and Sylvia knitted a stocking with scarcely a word until she arose to get tea.
Cephas and Silas both came to tea, which was served in state, with a fine linen table-cloth, and Sylvia's mother's green and white sprigged china. Nobody suspected, as they tasted the damson sauce with the thin silver spoons, as they tilted the green and white teacups to their lips, and ate the rich pound-cake and pie, what a very feast of renunciation and tragedy this was to poor Sylvia Crane. Cephas and Silas, indeed, knew that money had been advanced her by the town upon her estate, but they were far from suspecting, and, indeed, were unwilling to suspect, how nearly it was exhausted and the property lived out. It was only a meagre estimate that the town of Pembroke had made of the Crane ancestral acres. If Silas and Cephas had ever known what it was, they had dismissed it from their minds, they were interested in not knowing. Suppose their wives should want to give her a home and support.
The women knew nothing whatever.
When they went home, an hour after tea, Hannah Berry turned to Sylvia in the doorway. “I suppose you know the weddin' is comin' off pretty soon now,” said she.
“Yes, I s'posed 'twas,” answered Sylvia, trying to smile.
“Well, I thought I'd jest mention it, so you could get your present ready,” said Hannah. She nudged Rose violently as she spoke.
“I don't care; I meant to give her a hint,” she said, chuckling, when they were outside. “She can give you something jest as well as not; she might give you some silver teaspoons, or a table, or sofa. There! she bought that handsome sofa for herself a few years ago, an' she didn't need it more'n nothin' at all. I suppose she thought Richard Alger was comin' steady, but now he's stopped.”
Rose was married in a few weeks. The morning of the wedding-day Sylvia went into Berry's store and called William aside.