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“There! there! ‘Melia,” said he, pushing past her, “can’t stop to talk till I git near the fire. Guess you were settin’ in the kitchen, wa’n’t ye? Don’t make no stranger o’ me. That your man?”

She had shut the door, and entered, exasperated anew by the rising wind. “That’s my husband,” said she coldly. “Enoch, here’s cousin Josiah Pease.”

Enoch looked up benevolently over his spectacles, and put out a horny left hand, the while the other guarded his heap of treasures. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” said he. “You see I’m tinkerin’ a clock.”

To Enoch, the explanation was enough. All the simple conventions of his life might well wait upon a reason potent as this. Josiah Pease went to the stove, and stood holding his tremulous hands over a cover. He was a little man, eclipsed in a butternut coat of many capes, and his parchment face shaded gradually up from it, as if into a harder medium. His eyes were light, and they had an exceedingly uncomfortable way of darting from one thing to another, like some insect born to spear and sting. His head was entirely bald, all save a thin fringe of hair not worth mentioning, since it disappeared so effectually beneath his collar; and his general antiquity was grotesquely emphasized by two sets of aggressive teeth, displaying their falsity from every crown.

Amelia took out the broom, and began sweeping up buttons. She had an acrid consciousness that by sacrificing them she was somehow completing the tragedy of her day. Rosie gave a little cry; but Amelia pointed to the corner where stood the child’s chair, exhumed from the attic, after forty years of rest. “You set there,” she said, in an undertone, “an’ keep still.”

Rosie obeyed without a word. Such an atmosphere had not enveloped her since she entered this wonderful house. Remembering vaguely the days when her own mother had “spells,” and she and her father effaced themselves until times should change, she folded her little hands, and lapsed back into a condition of mental servitude.

Meanwhile, Amelia followed nervously in the track of Enoch’s talk with cousin Josiah, though her mind kept its undercurrent of foolish musing. Like all of us, snatched up by the wheels of great emergencies, she caught at trifles while they whirled her round. Here were “soldier-buttons.” All the other girls had collected them, though she, having no lover in the war, had traded for her few. Here were the gold-stones that held her changeable silk, there the little clouded pearls from her sister’s raglan. Annie had died in youth; its glamour still enwrapped her. Poor Annie! But Rosie had seemed to bring her back. Amelia swept litter, buttons and all, into the dustpan, and marched to the stove to throw her booty in. Nobody marked her save Rosie, whose playthings were endangered; but Enoch’s very obtuseness to the situation was what stayed her hand. She carried the dustpan away into a closet, and came back, to gather up her tins. A cold rage of nervousness beset her, so overpowering that she herself was amazed at it.

Meantime, Josiah Pease had divested himself of his coat, and drawn the grandfather chair into a space behind the stove.

“You a clock-mender by trade?” he asked of Enoch.

“No,” said Enoch absently, “I ain’t got any reg’lar trade.”

“Jest goin’ round the country?” amended cousin Josiah, with the preliminary insinuation Amelia knew so well. He was, it had been said, in the habit of inventing lies, and challenging other folks to stick to ’em. But Enoch made no reply. He went soberly on with his work.

“Law, ‘Melia, to think o’ your bein’ married,” continued Josiah, turning to her. “I never should ha’ thought that o’ you.”

“I never thought it of myself,” said Amelia tartly. “You don’t know what you’ll do till you’re tried.”

“No! no!” said Josiah Pease. “Never in the world. You remember Sally Flint, how plain-spoken she is? Well, Betsy Harden’s darter Ann rode down to the poor-house t’other day with some sweet trade, an’ took a young sprig with her. He turned his back a minute, to look out o’ winder, an’ Sally spoke right up, as ye might say, afore him. ‘That your beau?’ says she. Well, o’ course Ann couldn’t own it, an’ him right there, so to speak. So she shook her head. ‘Well, I’m glad on ‘t,’ says Sally. ‘If I couldn’t have anything to eat, I’d have suthin’ to look at!’ He was the most unsignifyin’est creatur’ you ever put your eyes on. But they say Ann’s started in on her clo’es.”