FullReads

“Well, I ain’t allowed to forgit ’em very often,” she replied comfortably. “Rheumatiz is my cross, an’ I’ve got to bear it. Sometimes I wish ‘t had gone into my hands ruther ‘n my feet, an’ I could ha’ got round. But there! if ‘t ain’t one thing, it’s another. Mis’ Eben Smith’s got eight young ones down with the whoopin’-cough. Amos dragged me over there yisterday; an’ when I heerd ’em tryin’ to see which could bark the loudest, I says, ‘Give me the peace o’ Jerusalem in my own house, even if I don’t stir a step for the next five year no more ‘n I have for the last.’ I dunno what ‘t would be if I hadn’t a darter. I’ve been greatly blessed.”

The talk went on in pleasant ripples, while Amelia moved back and forth from pantry to table. She brought out the mixing-board, and began to put her bread in the pans, while the tin kitchen stood in readiness by the hearth. The sunshine flooded all the room, and lay insolently on the paling fire; the Maltese cat sat in the broadest shaft of all, and, having lunched from her full saucer in the corner, made her second toilet for the day.

“‘Melia,” said aunt Ann suddenly, looking down over her glasses at the tin kitchen, “ain’t it a real cross to bake in that thing?”

“I always had it in mind to buy me a range,” answered Amelia reservedly, “but somehow we never got to it.”

“That’s the only thing I ever had ag’inst John. He was as grand a man as ever was, but he did set everything by such truck. Don’t turn out the old things, I say, no more ‘n the old folks; but when it comes to makin’ a woman stan’ quiddlin’ round doin’ work back side foremost, that beats me.”

“He’d have got me a stove in a minute,” burst forth Amelia in haste, “only he never knew I wanted it!”

“More fool you not to ha’ said so!” commented aunt Ann, unwinding her ball. “Well, I s’pose he would. John wa’n’t like the common run o’ men. Great strong creatur’ he was, but there was suthin’ about him as soft as a woman. His mother used to say his eyes’d fill full o’ tears when he broke up a settin’ hen. He was a good husband to you,–a good provider an’ a good friend.”

Amelia was putting down her bread for its last rising, and her face flushed.

“Yes,” she said gently, “he was good.”

“But there!” continued aunt Ann, dismissing all lighter considerations, “I dunno’s that’s any reason why you should bake in a tin kitchen, nor why you should need to heat up the brick oven every week, when ’twas only done to please him, an’ he ain’t here to know. Now, ‘Melia, le’s see what you could do. When you got the range in, ‘twould alter this kitchen all over. Why don’t you tear down that old-fashioned mantelpiece in the fore-room?”

“I could have a marble one,” responded Amelia in a low voice. She had taken her sewing again, and she bent her head over it as if she were ashamed. A flush had risen in her cheeks, and her hand trembled.

“Wide marble! real low down!” confirmed aunt Ann, in a tone of triumph. “So fur as that goes, you could have a marble-top table.” She laid down her knitting, and looked about her, a spark of excited anticipation in her eyes. All the habits of a lifetime urged her on to arrange and rearrange, in pursuit of domestic perfection. People used to say, in her first married days, that Ann Doby wasted more time in planning conveniences about her house than she ever saved by them “arter she got ’em.” In her active years, she was, in local phrase, “a driver.” Up and about early and late, she directed and managed until her house seemed to be a humming hive of industry and thrift. Yet there was never anything too urgent in that sway. Her beaming good-humor acted as a buffer between her and the doers of her will; and though she might scold, she never rasped and irritated. Nor had she really succumbed in the least to the disease which had practically disabled her. It might confine her to a chair and render her dependent upon the service of others, but over it, also, was she spiritual victor. She could sit in her kitchen and issue orders; and her daughter, with no initiative genius of her own, had all aunt Ann’s love of “springin’ to it.” She cherished, besides, a worshipful admiration for her mother; so that she asked no more than to act as the humble hand under that directing head. It was Amos who tacitly rebelled. When a boy in school, he virtually gave up talking, and thereafter opened his lips only when some practical exigency was to be filled. But once did he vouchsafe a reason for that eccentricity. It was in his fifteenth year, as aunt Ann remembered well, when the minister had called; and Amos, in response to some remark about his hope of salvation, had looked abstractedly out of the window.