But at the last Mrs. Todd came quickly back from the gate, and standing in the sunshine at the door, she beckoned me as if she were a sibyl.
“I thought you comprehended everything the day you was up there,” she added with a little more patience in her tone, but I felt that she thought I had lost instead of gained since we parted the autumn before.
“William’s made this pretext o’ goin’ fishin’ for the last time. ’Twouldn’t done to take notice, ’twould ‘a scared him to death! but there never was nobody took less comfort out o’ forty years courtin’. No, he won’t have to make no further pretexts,” said Mrs. Todd, with an air of triumph.
“Did you know where he was going that day?” I asked, with a sudden burst of admiration at such discernment.
“I did!” replied Mrs. Todd grandly.
“Oh! but that pennyroyal lotion,” I indignantly protested, remembering that under pretext of mosquitoes she had besmeared the poor lover in an awful way—why, it was outrageous! Medea could not have been more conscious of high ultimate purposes.
“Darlin’,” said Mrs. Todd, in the excitement of my arrival and the great concerns of marriage, “he’s got a beautiful shaped face, and they pison him very unusual—you wouldn’t have had him present himself to his lady all lop-sided with a mosquito-bite? Once when we was young I rode up with him, and they set upon him in concert the minute we entered the woods.” She stood before me reproachfully, and I was conscious of deserved rebuke. “Yes, you’ve come just in the nick of time to advise me about a bunnit. They say large bows on top is liable to be worn.”
IV.
The period of waiting was one of direct contrast to these high moments of recognition. The very slowness of the morning hours wasted that sense of excitement with which we had begun the day. Mrs. Todd came down from the mount where her face had shone so bright, to the cares of common life, and some acquaintances from Black Island for whom she had little natural preference or liking came, bringing a poor, sickly child to get medical advice. They were noisy women, with harsh, clamorous voices, and they stayed a long time. I heard the clink of teacups, however, and could detect no impatience in the tones of Mrs. Todd’s voice; but when they were at last going away, she did not linger unduly over her leave-taking, and returned to me to explain that they were people she had never liked, and they had made an excuse of a friendly visit to save their doctor’s bill; but she pitied the poor little child, and knew beside that the doctor was away.
“I had to give ’em the remedies right out,” she told me; “they wouldn’t have bought a cent’s worth o’ drugs down to the store for that dwindlin’ thing. She needed feedin’ up, and I don’t expect she gets milk enough; they’re great butter-makers down to Black Island, ’tis excellent pasturage, but they use no milk themselves, and their butter is heavy laden with salt to make weight, so that you’d think all their ideas come down from Sodom.”