“Did he?” asked Marion, twisting one of Judith’s curls about her finger.
“O, Judith, I know you want me to tell you a story,” she said hastily, as Aunt Affy slipped on her glasses again and took the coat sleeve into her hand. To Marion that coat sleeve was a part of Aunt Affy’s “new Bible.”
“Oh, yes,” replied Judith, with pure delight.
“Judith would have enjoyed the age of tradition,” said Aunt Affy; “just think,” in her voice of young enthusiasm, “instead of reading it, what it would be to hear from Andrew’s own lips the story of that day.”
“We are living there now,” said Marion; “I am. The title of my life just now is ‘The Parsonage story of Village Life.’ But the story I want to tell Judith to-day is an episode in my own life. Seven years ago. I haven’t even told Roger yet, and I tell him everything. I think I never told any one before. I used to be at the head of things in those days; father was often away, and the children were all younger, except Roger, and mother wasn’t strong. We lived in an old house in a broad city street, away back, with a box-bordered yard in front, and lilacs, and old-fashioned things behind; we were all born there, even Roger, the eldest, and our only moving times was in the spring and fall cleaning. Once a friend of mine moved, and I was enough in the moving times to be there at an impromptu dinner; we stood around a pine table in the kitchen, or sat on anything we could find, a firkin, or peach basket turned upside down, and they let me eat a piece of pie in my fingers. All I wanted was to do something just like it myself. And when mother said I might stay all my birthday week and help Aunt Bessie move, I thought my ship had come in, laden with moving times.
“Aunt Bessie lived in the city in a beautiful home, but something had happened that summer; Uncle Frank was in Europe and could not come home, and Aunt Bessie and the children had to go into the country for a year.
“The ‘country’ was only seven miles away; first the train, then the horse cars, and, then, a two-mile drive.
“The wagons from the country came for the things Monday morning; there were two big loads (everything else had been sold), and in the country home we expected to find new and plain furniture that had already been sent from the stores.
“Monday the children and I had a hilarious time at dinner; moving times had begun, and I did eat a piece of pie in my fingers. I was too full of the fun of things to notice that Aunt Bessie ate no dinner, and Elsie and I were teasing Rob in noisy play after dinner, and did not see that she was very white and scarcely spoke at all.
“‘Marion,’ she said at last, ‘I cannot conquer it; I’ve tried for half the day and all night; I cannot hold up my head another minute; one of my terrible headaches has come upon me. Jane will have to stay here with me and baby and Rob—do you think you could—but no, you couldn’t—it’s too lonely for you—and I may not get there to-night.’