“And you think that my story can not be that? Sometimes I think that unmarried people live the most perfect love stories.”
Lifting the mass of white wool from Tessa’s lap and taking the needle, she worked half a minute before she spoke; Sue’s curious, bright eyes were on her face, Tessa’s were on the wool she was playing with.
“Twenty-five years ago, when I was younger than I am now, and as intense and as full of aspirations as Tessa here, and as full of fun, as you, Sue Greyson, I boarded one winter with a widow. She was quite middle-aged and lived alone with her chickens and cat, very comfortably off, but she wanted a boarder or two for company. My store was a little affair then, but I was a busy body; I used to study and sew evenings. Ah, those evenings! I often think them over now as I sit alone. I shall never forget that winter. I grew. The widow and I were not alone; before I had been there a week a young man came, he was scarcely older than I—”
Sue laughed and looked at Tessa.
“He was to sail away in the spring to some dreadful place,—that sounds like you, Sue,—to be a missionary!”
“A missionary!” exclaimed Sue.
“Every evening he read aloud to us, usually poetry or the Bible. Poetry meant something to me then—that sounds like you, Tessa. One evening he read Esther, one evening Ruth, and when he read Nehemiah, oh, how enthusiastic we were! He talked and talked and talked, and I listened and listened and listened till all my heart went out to meet him.”
“Ah,” cried Sue, “to think of you being in love, Miss Jewett. I didn’t know that you were ever so naughty!”
“At last the time came that he must go—the very last evening. I thought that those evenings could never end, but they did. I could hardly see my stitches for tears; I was making over a black bombazine for the widow, and the next evening I had to rip my work out! He read awhile,—he was reading Rasselas that night,—and then he dropped the book and talked of his work and the life he expected to lead.
“‘You ought to take a wife,’ said the widow.