“Hogshead was scairt to death whenever he come to see Lovice. One night, when he’d been there once, and she’d hid, as she always done, he come back a second time, and she went to the door, not mistrusting it was him. ‘Did you forget anything?’ says she, sparkling out at him through a little crack. He was all taken aback by seeing her, and he stammered out, ‘Yes, I forgot my han’k’chief; but it don’t make no odds, for I didn’t pay out but fifteen cents for it two year ago, and I don’t make no use of it ’ceptins to wipe my nose on.’ How we did laugh over that! Well, he had a conviction of sin pretty soon afterwards, and p’r’aps it helped his head some; at any rate, he quit farming, and become a Bullockite preacher.
“It seems odd, when Lovice wa’n’t a perfessor herself, she should have drawed the most pious young men in the village, but she did; she had good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists, Millerites and Adventists, all on her string together; she even had one Cochranite, though the sect had mostly died out. But when Reuben Granger come home, a full-feathered-out minister, he seemed to strike her fancy as he never had before, though they were always good friends from children. He had light hair and blue eyes and fair skin (his business being under cover kep’ him bleached out), and he and Lovey made the prettiest couple you ever see; for she was dark complexioned, and her cheeks no otherways than scarlit the whole durin’ time. She had a change of heart that winter; in fact, she had two of ’em, for she changed hers for Reuben’s, and found a hope at the same time. ’Twas a good, honest conversion, too, though she did say to me she was afraid that if Reuben hadn’t taught her what love was or might be, she’d never have found out enough about it to love God as she’d ought to.
“There, I’ve begun both roses, and hers is ’bout finished. I sha’n’t have more’n enough white alapaca. It’s lucky the moths spared one breadth of the wedding dresses; we was married on the same day, you know, and dressed just alike. Jot wa’n’t quite ready to be married, for he wa’n’t any more forehanded ’bout that than he was ’bout other things; but I told him Lovey and I had kept up with each other from the start, and he’d got to fall into line or drop out of the percession. Now what next?”
“Wasn’t there anybody at the wedding but you and Lovice?” asked Priscilla, with an amused smile.
“Land, yes! The meeting-house was cram jam full. Oh, to be sure! I know what you’re driving at! Well, I have to laugh to think I should have forgot the husbands! They’ll have to be worked into the story, certain; but it’ll be consid’able of a chore, for I can’t make flowers out of coat and pants stuff, and there ain’t any more flowers on this branch, anyway.”
Diadema sat for a few minutes in rapt thought, and then made a sudden inspired dash upstairs, where Miss Hollis presently heard her rummaging in an old chest. She soon came down, triumphant.
“Wa’n’t it a providence I saved Jot’s and Reuben’s wedding ties! And here they are—one yellow and green mixed, and one brown. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to draw in a butterfly hovering over them two roses, and make it out of the neckties—green with brown spots. That’ll bring in the husbands; and land! I wouldn’t have either of ’em know it for the world. I’ll take a pattern of that lunar moth you pinned on the curtain yesterday.”
Miss Hollis smiled in spite of herself. “You have some very ingenious ideas and some very pretty thoughts, Mrs. Bascom, do you know it?”
“It’s the first time I ever heard tell of it,” said Diadema cheerfully. “Lovey was the pretty-spoken, pretty-appearing one; I was always plain and practical. While I think of it, I’ll draw in a little mite of this red into my carnation pink. It was a red scarf Reuben brought Lovey from Portland. It was the first thing he ever give her, and aunt Hitty said if one of the Abel Grangers give away anything that cost money, it meant business. That was all fol-de-rol, for there never was a more liberal husband, though he was a poor minister; but then they always are poor, without they’re rich; there don’t seem to be any half-way in ministers.
“We was both lucky that way. There ain’t a stingy bone in Jot Bascom’s body. He don’t make much money, but what he does make goes into the bureau drawer, and the one that needs it most takes it out. He never asks me what I done with the last five cents he give me. You’ve never been married, Miss Hollis, and you ain’t engaged, so you don’t know much about it; but I tell you there’s a heap o’ foolishness talked about husbands. If you get the one you like yourself, I don’t know as it matters if all the other women folks in town don’t happen to like him as well as you do; they ain’t called on to do that. They see the face he turns to them, not the one he turns to you. Jot ain’t a very good provider, nor he ain’t a man that’s much use round a farm, but he’s such a fav’rite I can’t blame him. There’s one thing: when he does come home he’s got something to say, and he’s always as lively as a cricket, and smiling as a basket of chips. I like a man that’s good comp’ny, even if he ain’t so forehanded. There ain’t anything specially lovable about forehandedness, when you come to that. I shouldn’t ever feel drawed to a man because he was on time with his work. He’s got such pleasant ways, Jot has! The other afternoon he didn’t get home early enough to milk; and after I done the two cows, I split the kindling and brought in the wood, for I knew he’d want to go to the tavern and tell the boys ’bout the robbery up to Boylston. There ain’t anybody but Jot in this village that has wit enough to find out what’s going on, and tell it in an int’resting way round the tavern fire. And he can do it without being full of cider, too; he don’t need any apple juice to limber his tongue!