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At Sudleigh Fair
by
She broke the rich brown loaf in the middle, and divided a piece with Molly. Such were the habits calculated to irritate the conventionalities of Tiverton against her. Who ever heard of breaking cake when one could go into the house for a knife! They ate in silence, and the delights of the summer day grew upon Molly as they never did save when she felt the nearness of this queer little woman. Turn which side of her personality she might toward you, Dilly could always bend you to her own train of thought.
“I come down to talk things over,” said Molly, at last, brushing the crumbs of cake from her lap. “I’ve got a chance in the shoe-shop.”
“Do tell! Well, ain’t that complete? Don’t you say one word, now! I know how ’tis. You think how you’ll have to give up the birds’ singin’, an’ your goin’ into the woods arter groundpine, an’ stay cooped up in a boardin’-house to Sudleigh. I know how ’tis! But don’t you fret. You come right here an’ stay Sundays, an’ we’ll eat up the woods an’ drink up the sky! There! It’s better for ye, dear. Some folks are made to live in a holler tree, like me; some ain’t. You’ll be better on’t among folks.”
Molly’s eyes filled with tears.
“You’ve been real good to me,” she said, simply.
“I wish I’d begun it afore,” responded Dilly, with a quick upward lift of her head, and her brightest smile. “You see I didn’t know ye very well, for all you’d lived with old Mis’ Drew so many year. I ‘ain’t had much to do with folks. I knew ye hadn’t got nobody except her, but I knew, too, ye were contented there as a cricket. But when she died, an’ the house burnt down, I begun to wonder what was goin’ to become on ye.”
Molly sat looking over at the pine woods, her lips compressed, her cheeks slowly reddening. Finally she burst passionately forth,–
“Dilly, I’d like to know why I couldn’t have got some rooms an’ kep’ house for Elvin? His mother’s my own aunt!”
“She wa’n’t his mother, ye know. She was His stepmother, for all they set so much by one Another. Folks would ha’ talked, an’ I guess Rosy wouldn’t ha’ stood that, even afore they were engaged. Rosy may not like corn-fodder herself, any more ‘n t’other dog did, but she ain’t goin’ to see other noses put into’t without snappin’ at ’em.”
“Well, it’s all over,” said Molly, drearily. “It ‘ain’t been hard for me stayin’ round as I’ve done, an’ sewin’ for my board; but it’s seemed pretty tough to think of Elvin livin’ in that little shanty of Caleb’s an’ doin’ for himself. I never could see why he didn’t board somewheres decent.”
“Wants to save his six hunderd dollars, to go out West an’ start in the furniture business,” said Dilly, succinctly. “Come, Molly, what say to walkin’ over to Sudleigh Cattle-Show?”
Molly threw aside her listless mood like a garment.
“Will you?” she cried. “Oh, I’d like to! You know I’m sewin’ for Mis’ Eli Pike; an’ they asked me to go, but I knew she’d fill up the seat so I should crowd ’em out of house an’ home. Will you, Dilly?”
“You wait till I git suthin’ or other to put over my head,” said Dilly, rising with cheerful decision. “Here, you gi’ me that cake! I’ll tie it up in a nice clean piece o’ table-cloth, an’ then we’ll take along a few eggs, so ‘t we can trade ’em off for bread an’ cheese. You jest pull in my sheets, an’ shet the winder, while I do it. Like as not there’ll be a shower this arternoon.”
When the little gate closed behind them, Molly felt eagerly excited, as, if she were setting forth for a year’s happy wandering. Dilly knew the ways of the road as well as the wood. She was, as usual, in light marching order, a handkerchief tied over her smooth braids; another, slung on a stick over her shoulder, contained their luncheon and the eggs for barter. All her movements were buoyant and free, like those of a healthy animal let loose in pleasant pastures. She walked so lightly that the eggs in the handkerchief were scarcely stirred.