It was very tiresome riding on the cars all day, with the same monotonous stretch of prairie to be seen from the window; so I am sure it was pardonable in me to listen to the conversation of my fellow-passengers.
Just in front of me (their bundles on a seat before them) sat two elderly women, old friends, it seemed, who had chanced to meet in their journeying; and it was a sentence or two of their talk that caught my attention, and presently I became so interested that I no longer felt my weariness.
“And so,” said one, “you say they are livin’ all alone in that big house of their’n! I knowed the girls was all married an’ gone, but I heerd Jim had tuk a wife home to live with the old folks, and I said to Simon, says I, ‘Well, it’ll take more’n a mortal woman to live with Mary Ann Curtis onless she’s mightily changed sence I use ter know her,’ says I.”
“Well,” said the other voice, and a sweet, patient-sounding voice it was—so sweet, indeed, that I glanced over to look at its owner. She was a little, quaint old woman, with soft brown eyes and a pathetic, lovable face. I fell in love with her at once. Her companion was a younger woman, with shrewd, black, observing eyes and sharp nose 225 and chin. From appearances and manner, I judged both were wives of well-to-do farmers.
“Well,” said the sweet voice, “Jim did marry a mortal woman, but Mary Ann soon made a angel out of her. I knowed Jim Curtis’s wife as well as if she’d ben my own child; and no wonder, seein’ as she boarded with me and Jonathan nigh on to a year. You see, she was left an orphan, and her uncle that raised her, not bein’ well off, give her what schoolin’ he could, an’ then when she was about sixteen year old he got her first the summer school in our deestric, and then, as she suited the folks, the d’rectors they let her have it fur the winter. I was sort o’ feared for her to tackle the winter school, seein’ as some of the big boys, and girls, too, for that matter, ’s pritty obstreperous; but Rhody she laughed and tossed her head an’ said, ‘I’ll get along, Aunt Nancy!’ (You know everybody in the neighborhood calls me Aunt Nancy, and Rhody she picked it up as natral as could be.)
“Well, she did manage somehow, an’ never had a bit of trouble. An’ I use ter watch o’ evenin’s for her to come, allus smilin’, and with somethin’ funny to tell about the scholars. I declare to you, Mis’ Johnson, if she’d ben our own, Jonathan an’ me couldn’t a sot more by her. Why, whenever it was rainy or snowy the ole man would saddle a horse an’ go for her, an’ she’d look that cute, settin’ behin’ on ole Molly an’ holdin’ on to the ole man!
“One cold evenin’ (it was a Friday evenin’, too—I’ll never forgit it), jist as Jonathan got the saddle on the mare, we heard sleigh-bells, for I was out at the fence talkin’ to the ole man, an’ who should come sailin’ up the road, large as life, but Jim Curtis in his new sleigh, with our Rhody, smilin’ and rosy, beside him. ‘There, ole man,’ says I, ‘your cake’s dough.’ And I declare fur it, ef he warn’t that cut up he could scarce be civil to the youngsters.
“Of course you know how it was after that—no needcessity fur the ole man botherin’ any more; not ’at it was bother, for he allus liked goin’ fur Rhody; but laws! Jim was allus on hand, no matter how the weather was, an’ he tuk her to her uncle’s two or three times, an’ to meetin’ Sundays, an’ I up an’ tole her one day that I b’lieved I’d ask Jim to board with us, an’ her face got mighty red, an’ she stepped up an’ put both arms roun’ my neck, she was such a lovin’ leetle critter, an’ she says, ‘You aint mad, Aunt Nancy, are you? You like Jim, don’t you?’