She made the chore boy saw a new board for her stays, which she laced until every breath she drew was a sigh. She could not even sniff without a pang in her bosom, and after she was dressed she ordered the maid of all work to go around her with a tape line. She smiled, although it was a mighty effort, when she heard the girl exclaim: “Thirty-four inches, Mistress Jackson; that’s two inches less than last week, and three inches less than the week before.” What a sacrifice was she offering upon the altar of her love. She met the doctor with a fat smile, which she meant should be captivating, but which only served to make her ridiculous. The doctor thought as he went slowly to his study: “I wonder what has come over the old lass. She seems a good deal spruced up. It must be that she is on the war path for a successor to the dear departed. Well I wish her all the good fortune that may attend her. Fortune is a fickle jade.”
He did not dream that all these demonstrations were in honor of his modest self.
The boarders looked at one another as their landlady with a sweet smile, asked the doctor to accompany her to the parlor as they left the table. What was about to happen? Were the skies going to fall? Were their eyes to behold that sacred veil, i. e.—the door—lifted so that at last they might gaze on what lay beyond? Oh, no, the landlady had other plans. As the doctor could hardly refuse her invitation this first evening of his return, he acquiesced with as good grace as possible.
Taking his arm and giggling like a girl of sixteen, she swept him out of the door on to the veranda, and unlocking the big green door, ushered him with an awed manner into the sacred room. The semi-twilight which struggled through the drawn shades, was embarrassing in the extreme to the doctor, who was all at sea as to his surroundings. He dared not advance a step in any direction, for huge shapes loomed up before him, the likeness of which he could only imagine. Vague feelings of mistrust as to his landlady’s designs began to steal upon him. He wished he had not come. She still held his arm, and she now gave it a little squeeze which made him feel chilly. “Horrors! what was this dreadful woman about to say or do?” He resolved to forestall her by saying: “Madam, take pity on my youth and innocence. I am an orphan, with neither father or mother, and two hundred miles from home,” but ere he could muster his courage she had left him, and in a moment he heard a flint struck, and she came toward him bearing a candelabra which she set upon a table. He could now see where he was, and as she said: “Be seated, doctor,” he gingerly consigned himself to one of the horsehair chairs, which looked to him like an evil spirit in disguise.
She seated herself in a similar chair, which she drew perilously near the doctor. He would have liked to move away, but he felt a slipperiness which warned him that any unguarded move might send him upon the floor. He raised his eyes to where hung the portrait of the dear departed. Here, at least, was a safe subject for conversation.
“A fine-looking man,” he said, nodding at the sepulchral face of Samuel.
“Ah, now, you be talking,” replied the widow, with a loud sniff, which caused her untold agony in the region of her waist. “Oh, he was a man what was a man, was that one. Never a word of fault about anything, just that even tempered was he. Give him his ale and a pipe, and you’d never know he was in the house. He was Scotch, you know.”
“I perceive that,” said the doctor, who felt in duty bound to say something.
“Yes,” continued the widow, “that picture I had copied. A man came along and stopped with me two weeks. He never paid me any board money. He hadn’t any money, so he said as how he would paint my Samuel’s picter. It’s as nateral as life, only one thing, Samuel had a cast in one eye. I often longed to know how he would look with two straight eyes, so I had him painted with both eyes alike. Oh, how I have admired that picter. It was the only thing I didn’t quite love him for, that squint. Sometimes it were worse nor others, and I know when he was courting me, I used to imagine he had one eye on me and tother on the timepiece, as if he was thinking about going every minute. He’s been dead seven year. I wore my bombazine as long as any widow ever does. I mourned him faithful. Folks ought not to gossip if I see fit to choose another.” She heaved a sigh and looked coyly at the doctor. “I have saved a good bit of money, and it’s all in stocks and bonds. This house and the next one is mine, clear from debt. I don’t owe anybody. I’m as good a match for a man of my age as you’ll find in a long run.”
The doctor fidgeted. “Was he listening to a proposal from this old busybody, who was old enough to be his mother, or she ought to be, if she wasn’t? Would nothing help him out of this dilemma?” In his uneasiness he had been perilously nearing the edge of the chair, but he was unaware of his peril. He was trying to conjure some excuse for leaving the room without telling a down-right lie. “My dear,”—he was about to add “madam,” but his evil star was just then in the ascendant, for, without warning, before he could regain his balance, the treacherous horsehair deposited him at the widow’s feet. She did not wait for him to finish his sentence. The sight of him upon his knees before her, where she had so often seen him in her dreams, was too much, and clasping him around the neck, she held his head tightly against her expansive breast, while she sobbed: “Yes, I know I am your dear. Oh, Arthur! how happy we shall be! I’ll turn all the boarders away, and we’ll live here all alone, just you and me, ducky.”