FullReads

Georgie was by himself, as usual, looking grave and intent. He had gone aloft on the wheel of a clumsy great ox-cart in which some of the men had come to the auction, and he was looking over people’s heads, and seeing every thing that was sold. I saw he was not ready to come away, so I was not in a hurry. I heard Mrs. Wallis say to one of her friends, “You just go in and take that rug with the flowers on’t, and go and put it in your wagon. It’s right beside my chest that’s packed ready to go. John told me to give away any thing I had a mind to. He don’t care nothing about the money. I hooked that rug four year ago; it’s most new; the red of the roses was made out of a dress of Miranda’s. I kept it a good while after she died; but it’s no us to let it lay. I’ve given a good deal to my sister Stiles: she was over here helping me yesterday. There! it’s all come upon me so sudden; I s’pose I shall wish, after I get away, that I had done things different; but, after I knew the farm was goin’ to be sold, I didn’t seem to realize I was goin’ to break up, until John came, day before yesterday.”

She was very friendly with me, when I said I should think she would be sorry to go away: but she seemed glad to find I had been in Boston a great deal, and that I was not at all unhappy there. “But I suppose you have folks there,” said she, “though I never supposed they was so sociable as they be here, and I ain’t one that’s easy to make acquaintance. It’s different with young folks; and then in a case o’ sickness I should hate to have strange folks round me. It seems as if I never set so much by the old place as I do now I’m goin’ away. I used to wish ‘he’ would sell, and move over to the Port, it was such hard work getting along when the child’n was small. And there’s one of my boys that run away to sea, and never was heard from. I’ve always thought he might come back, though everybody gave him up years ago. I can’t help thinking what if he should come back, and find I wa’n’t here! There; I’m glad to please John: he sets everything by me, and I s’pose he thinks he’s going to make a spry young woman of me. Well, it’s natural. Every thing looks fair to him, and he thinks he can have the world just as he wants it; but I know it’s a world o’ change,–a world o’ change and loss. And you see, I shall have to go to a strange meetin’ up there. Why, Mis’ Sands! I am pleased to see you. How did you get word?” And then Mrs. Wallis made another careful apology for moving away. She seemed to be so afraid some one would think she had not been satisfied with the neighbourhood.

The auctioneer was a disagreeable-looking man, with a most unpleasant voice, which gave me a sense of discomfort, the little old house and its surroundings seemed so grave and silent and lonely. It was like having all the noise and confusion on a Sunday. The house was so shut in by the trees, that the only outlook to the world beyond was a narrow gap in the pines, through which one could see the sea, bright, blue and warm with sunshine, that summer day.

There was something wistful about the place, as there must have been about the people who had lived there; yet, hungry and unsatisfied as her life might have been in many ways, the poor old woman dreaded the change.