Old Mrs. Barker, true to instinct, hastened to put on her saddest bonnet, kept in an old chest at the demand of funerals, and with all speed set out for the afflicted home. Margaret was feeding the chickens when this consoling stimulator of grief arrived, and what little sun was left, immediately went down.
Beneath the mantle-piece there was no blaze, the weather being hot, so they could not sit down "and weep the fire out," but they could hover over old ashes and weep them wet. The real griefs in old Mrs. Barker's life had been but few. It was a mercy-shaft that had shot Old Barker down; rheumatic cripple, he had beaten her with his crutch, and at his death she could not from her rebellious eye wring out a tear. No offspring had she over whose death to mourn, and now she was put to for a companion piece to sorrow. But her mind flew back to a time when there died a man whom she could have loved, and her tears came full with the memory of a blissful morning when at church he had tied her horse and walked with her to the door. She had forgotten his name, if indeed she had ever been possessed of it, but she spoke of him as "he" as fast as her tears were falling.
"Ah, Lord, Sister Starbuck, I don't want to question the ways of Providence, but it do appear that we have staid here too long. I ought to have been taken when he left."
"You mean Barker, Sister?"
"Oh, no, I mean 'he'. I can remember how his hair waved, though I wasn't but sixteen at the time; and the day when he hitched my hoss for me, all the girls looked down-trod. It was more than fifty year ago."
"Of course I am a much younger woman," replied Sister Starbuck, "and I can't look back an' see no man but J—J—Jasper."
They returned to their silent weeping, and after a time a cup of coffee was suggested. Sister Barker objected. Her mind was so full of the past that she had no heart to swallow the devices of the present, but upon persuasion she yielded; and when the coffee was drunk, pipes were lighted and comfortably back they sat and talked about the neighbors. After a while an old carryall wobbled up to the gate and out got Mrs. Spencer. By the time she reached the door-step fresh tears were falling.
"Come right in," said Margaret. "I am so glad to see you at this time."
"And what do you want with me—to set down an' help you cry? Wall, I ain't of the cryin' sort. I put my cryin' aside when I got outen the cradle." She sat down and with a palm-leaf fanned herself. "It's a plum outrage," she said. "An' what's the matter with you, Miz Barker? Ain't lost a cow, have you? Why, yo' face looks like a old rock atter a heavy dew."
Mrs. Barker—they were not sisters now—wiped away her yellowish tears. "I have the right to cry if I feel like it," she replied. "I was a thinkin' of he."