She covered her eyes with one hand. “Courtin’ an’ entertainin’ goin’ on in the Chief’s house,” she said, “an’ him only just gone from us!”
“Well,” s’I, “I’ve got to have some man’s help out here this afternoon—why not Amos’s?”
“Oh,” says Mis’ Merriman, “you’re all against me but the Chief, an’ him helpless.”
“The Chief,” says I, “was always careful of your health. You’ll make yourself sick taking on so, Mis’ Fire Chief,” I told her. “You go and put flowers in the chambers and leave the rest to me. Put your mind,” I told her, “on the surprise you’ve got for your guests that’s comin’—Maria Carpenter here and all! Besides,” I couldn’t help sticking in, “I donno as Amos is cold poison.”
So we got her off up-stairs.
Maria Carpenter’s train was due at 3:03, so she was just a-going to have the right time to get ready when the afternoon would begin, because in Friendship Village “sharp four” means four o’clock. I had left the sandwiches to make last thing, and I come back from my dinner towards three and tiptoes through the house so’s not to disturb Mis’ Fire Chief if she was resting, and I went into the pantry and begun cutting and spreading bread. I hadn’t been there but a little while before the stair door into the kitchen opened and I heard Hettie come down, humming a little. But before I could sing out to her, the woodshed door opened too, and in come Amos that had been out putting more salt in the freezer.
“Hettie!” he says in a low voice, and I see she prob’ly hed on her white muslin and was looking like angels, and more. And—“I won’t,” says Amos, then—“I won’t—though I can hardly keep my hands off from you—dear.”
“It don’t seem right even to have you call me ‘dear,’ ” says Hettie, sad.
Amos burst right out. “It is right—it is right!” says he. “They can’t nobody make me feel ‘dear’ is wicked, not when it means as dear as you are to me. Hettie,” Amos says, “sit down here a minute.”
“Not us. Not together,” says Hettie, nervous.