"Supposin' I was to tell him that one about my first wife?" said the old man presently, and with an inquiring look around the circle.
Several heads were nodded approvingly, and Mr. Crumlish said, "The very one I'd 'a' chosen myself if you'd ast me."
Thus encouraged, Uncle Jabez, with a sort of deliberate promptness, began: "We married very young, Lavina and me,—too young, some said, but I never could see why, for I had a good farm, with health and strength to carry it on, and she was a master-hand with butter and cheese. At any rate, we thriv; and if we had plenty of children, there was plenty for 'em to eat, and they grew as fast as everything else did. She wasn't what you'd fairly call handsome, Lavina wasn't, but she was pleasant-appearin', very,—plump as a pa'tridge, with nice brown hair and eyes and a clean-lookin' skin. But it was her smile in particular that took me; and when she set in to laugh you couldn't no more' help laughin' along with her than one bobolink can help laughin' back when he hears another. She was the tenderest-hearted woman that ever breathed the breath of life: she couldn't bear to hurt the feelin's of a cat, and she'd go 'ithout a chicken-dinner any day sooner'n kill a chicken. As time passed on and she begun to age a little, she grew stouter 'n' stouter; but it didn't seem to worry her none. She'd puff and blow a good bit when she went up-stairs, but she'd always laugh about it, and say that when we was rich enough we'd put in an elevator, like they had at a big hotel we saw once. It would suit her fine, she said, to set down on a cushioned seat and be up-stairs afore she could git up again. Now, you needn't think I'm wanderin' from the p'int," and Uncle Jabez looked severely at Mr. Dickey, who was manifestly fidgeting. "All you folks that have lived about here all your lives knew Lavina 'ithout my tellin' you this; but Mr. Birchard he's a stranger in the neighborhood, and it's needful to the understandin' of my story that he should know just what sort of a woman she was,—or is, as I should say."
Mr. Dickey subsided, while Mr. Birchard tried to throw still more of an expression of the deepest interest and attention into his face. He must have succeeded, for the old man, going on with his story, fixed his eyes more and more frequently upon those of the young one. They were large, gentle, appealing blue eyes, with a mildly surprised expression, which Mr. Birchard found exceedingly attractive. Whether or not the fact that the youngest of Uncle Jabez's children, a daughter, had precisely similar eyes, in any way accounted for the attraction, I leave to minds more astute than my own.
"You may think," the narrator resumed, when he felt that he had settled Mr. Dickey, "whether or not you'd miss a woman like that, when you'd summered and wintered with her more'n forty year. She always said she hoped she'd go sudden, for she was so heavy it would 'a' took three or four of the common run of folks to lift her, and she dreaded a long sickness. Well, she was took at her word. We was settin', as it might be now, one on one side the fire, the other on t'other, in the big easy-cheers that Samuel—that's our oldest son, and a good boy, if I do say it—had sent us with the fust spare money he had. She'd been laughin' and jokin', as she so often did, five minutes afore. Gracie—she was a little thing then, and, bein' the youngest, a little sassy and sp'iled, mebbe—had been on a trip to the city, and she'd brought her ma a present of a shoe-buttoner with a handle a full foot long.
"'There, ma,' she says, laughin' up in her mother's face; 'you was complainin' about the distance it seemed to be to your feet: here's a kind of a telegraft-pole to shorten it a little.'
"My, how we did laugh! And Lavina must needs try it right away, to please Gracie; and she said it worked beautiful. But whether it was the laughin' so much right on top of a hearty supper, or the bendin' down to try her new toy, or both, she jest says, as natural as I'm speakin' now, 'Jabez, I'm a-goin'—' and then stopped. And when I looked up to see why she didn't finish, she was gone, sure enough."
His voice broke, and he stopped abruptly. Mr. Birchard, without in the least intending to do it, grasped his hand, and held it with affectionate warmth for a moment.
"Thank you, young man, thank you kindly," said Uncle Jabez, recovering his voice and shaking Mr. Birchard's hand heartily at the same moment. "You've an uncommon feelin' heart for one so young.
"To say I was lonesome after she went don't say much; but time evens things out after a while, or we couldn't stand it as long as we do. Gracie she settled into a little woman all at once, as you may say, and seemed older for a while than she does now. The rest was all married and gone, but one boy,—a good boy, too. But they came around me, comfortin' and helpin', though each one of 'em mourned her nigh as much as I did myself; and after a while, as I said, I got used, in a manner, to doin' 'ithout her."