At a sign from Nancy the hired man whipped up the horses. As they drove away Hester looked back at the clump of oak-trees around the house, and then at the two figures at the yard gate.
“I wish I’d done more for’em all these years they’ve been so good to me,” she said, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Fred held her hand close between both of his, but he made no answer, for her grief dazed him. He knew that many elements in her life had been distasteful to her; and why should a woman who was marrying the man she loved, and was moreover going to town to live, grieve in this way? The hired man turned in his seat and gave the needed word of comfort.
“You’ve done a sight for’em,” he said warmly, “and you ain’t no cause to fret, Miss Hetty. We’ll all miss you terrible.”
Uncle Peter wandered restlessly around the farm until dinner-time. An aching heart was a new experience to him, and one that he did not know how to meet. He went into the orchard and picked up apple after apple, and after a mere taste flung each of them away; as he left the orchard he stopped to look back at the mass of Spanish needle and goldenrod, through which he had just made his way.
“How she did like all that yeller stuff,” he said aloud. “What a sight of interest she took in everything about the place. She was a good girl, and I wish I’d a quit swearin’—‘twould have tickled her mightily. Hanged if I don’t quit it now!”
Nancy had an unusually good dinner ready for him. Preparing it had helped her to pass the morning, for Uncle Peter’s was not the only aching heart. She helped him lavishly to half a dozen vegetables, but for the first time within her memory of him, he had no appetite. He pushed back his chair before she brought his pie, and as he did so a sudden wave of antagonism to her came over him; he had never spoken to her of her stern words to Hester, but now involuntarily his criticism of her slipped from him.
“Blessed if I can see how you could have been so hard on Fred, and let pore Hetty go away feelin’ so broke up,” he said impetuously.
Nancy pressed her lips together firmly.
“I never judged Fred himself,” she said. “I always separated the sin from the sinner, and we are bidden to be unceasing in denouncing sin.”
Uncle Peter said no more; he rose from the table and went out to the porch, and as he sat there Fred’s words recurred to him, and roused a glow of affectionate feeling.