“Been visitin’ with ’Lijah?” she asked with interest. “I expect you had kind of a dull session; he ain’t the talkin’ kind; dwellin’ so much long o’ fish seems to make ’em lose the gift o’ speech.” But when I told her that Mr. Tilley had been talking to me that day, she interrupted me quickly.
“Then ’twas all about his wife, an’ he can’t say nothin’ too pleasant neither. She was modest with strangers, but there ain’t one o’ her old friends can ever make up her loss. For me, I don’t want to go there no more. There’s some folks you miss and some folks you don’t, when they’re gone, but there ain’t hardly a day I don’t think o’ dear Sarah Tilley. She was always right there; yes, you knew just where to find her like a plain flower. ’Lijah’s worthy enough; I do esteem ’Lijah, but he’s a ploddin’ man.”
XXI.
A DUNNET SHEPHERDESS.
I.
Early one morning at Dunnet Landing, as if it were still night, I waked, suddenly startled by a spirited conversation beneath my window. It was not one of Mrs. Todd’s morning soliloquies; she was not addressing her plants and flowers in words of either praise or blame. Her voice was declamatory though perfectly good-humored, while the second voice, a man’s, was of lower pitch and somewhat deprecating.
The sun was just above the sea, and struck straight across my room through a crack in the blind. It was a strange hour for the arrival of a guest, and still too soon for the general run of business, even in that tiny eastern haven where daybreak fisheries and early tides must often rule the day.
The man’s voice suddenly declared itself to my sleepy ears. It was Mr. William Blackett’s.
“Why, sister Almiry,” he protested gently, “I don’t need none o’ your nostrums!”
“Pick me a small han’ful,” she commanded. “No, no, a small han’ful, I said,—o’ them large pennyr’yal sprigs! I go to all the trouble an’ cossetin’ of ’em just so as to have you ready to meet such occasions, an’ last year, you may remember, you never stopped here at all the day you went up country. An’ the frost come at last an’ blacked it. I never saw any herb that so objected to gardin ground; might as well try to flourish mayflowers in a common front yard. There, you can come in now, an’ set and eat what breakfast you’ve got patience for. I’ve found everything I want, an’ I’ll mash ’em up an’ be all ready to put ’em on.”
I heard such a pleading note of appeal as the speakers went round the corner of the house, and my curiosity was so demanding, that I dressed in haste, and joined my friends a little later, with two unnoticed excuses of the beauty of the morning, and the early mail boat. William’s breakfast had been slighted; he had taken his cup of tea and merely pushed back the rest on the kitchen table. He was now sitting in a helpless condition by the side window, with one of his sister’s purple calico aprons pinned close about his neck. Poor William was meekly submitting to being smeared, as to his countenance, with a most pungent and unattractive lotion of pennyroyal and other green herbs which had been hastily pounded and mixed with cream in the little white stone mortar.