“I was goin’ to ask if we couldn’t git the new doctor to go up an’ do somethin’ for poor Ann’s arm,” said Miss Rebecca. “They say he’s very smart. If she could get so ’s to braid straw or hook rugs again, she’d soon be earnin’ a little somethin’. An’ may be he could do somethin’ for Mandy’s eyes. They did use to live so neat an’ ladylike. Somehow I couldn’t speak to tell ’em there that ’twas I bought them six best cups an’ saucers, time of the auction; they went very low, as everything else did, an’ I thought I could save it some other way. They shall have ’em back an’ welcome. You’re real whole-hearted, Mis’ Trimble. I expect Ann’ll be sayin’ that her father’s child’n wa’n’t goin’ to be left desolate, an’ that all the bread he cast on the water’s comin’ back through you.”
“I don’t care what she says, dear creatur’!” exclaimed Mrs. Trimble. “I’m full o’ regrets I took time for that installation, an’ set there seepin’ in a lot o’ talk this whole day long, except for its kind of bringin’ us to the Bray girls. I wish to my heart ’twas to-morrow mornin’ a’ready, an’ I a-startin’ for the selec’men.”
THE HILTONS’ HOLIDAY.
I.
There was a bright, full moon in the clear sky, and the sunset was still shining faintly in the west. Dark woods stood all about the old Hilton farmhouse, save down the hill, westward, where lay the shadowy fields which John Hilton, and his father before him, had cleared and tilled with much toil,—the small fields to which they had given the industry and even affection of their honest lives.
John Hilton was sitting on the doorstep of his house. As he moved his head in and out of the shadows, turning now and then to speak to his wife, who sat just within the doorway, one could see his good face, rough and somewhat unkempt, as if he were indeed a creature of the shady woods and brown earth, instead of the noisy town. It was late in the long spring evening, and he had just come from the lower field as cheerful as a boy, proud of having finished the planting of his potatoes.
“I had to do my last row mostly by feelin’,” he said to his wife. “I’m proper glad I pushed through, an’ went back an’ ended off after supper. ’Twould have taken me a good part o’ to-morrow mornin’, an’ broke my day.”
“’Tain’t no use for ye to work yourself all to pieces, John,” answered the woman quickly. “I declare it does seem harder than ever that we couldn’t have kep’ our boy; he’d been comin’ fourteen years old this fall, most a grown man, and he’d work right ’longside of ye now the whole time.”
“’Twas hard to lose him; I do seem to miss little John,” said the father sadly. “I expect there was reasons why ’twas best. I feel able an’ smart to work; my father was a girt strong man, an’ a monstrous worker afore me. ’Tain’t that; but I was thinkin’ by myself to-day what a sight o’ company the boy would ha’ been. You know, small ’s he was, how I could trust to leave him anywheres with the team, and how he’d beseech to go with me wherever I was goin’; always right in my tracks I used to tell ’em. Poor little John, for all he was so young he had a great deal o’ judgment; he’d ha’ made a likely man.”
The mother sighed heavily as she sat within the shadow.