FullReads

Next morning, when Dorcas carried in her father’s breakfast, she walked with a springing step, and spoke in a voice so full and fresh it made her newly glad.

“It’s a nice day, father! There’ll be lots of folks out to meeting.”

“That’s a good girl!” This was his commendation, from hour to hour; it made up the litany of his gratitude for what she had been to him. “But I dunno’s I feel quite up to preachin’ to-day, Dorcas!”

“That’ll be all right, father. We’ll get somebody.”

“You bring me out my sermon-box after breakfast, an’ I’ll pick out one,” said he, happily. “Deacon Tolman can read it.”

But, alas! Deacon Tolman had been dead this many a year!

A little later, the parson sat up in bed, shuffling his manuscript about with nervous hands, and Dorcas, in the kitchen, stood washing her breakfast dishes. That eager interest in living still possessed her. She began humming, in a timid monotone. Her voice had the clearness of truth, with little sweetness; and she was too conscious of its inadequacy to use it in public, save under the compelling force of conscience. Hitherto, she had only sung in Sunday-school, moved, as in everything, by the pathetic desire of “doing her part;” but this morning seemed to her one for lifting the voice, though not in Sunday phrasing. After a little thought, she began thinly and sweetly,–

“Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a maid sing in the valley below:
‘O don’t deceive me! O never leave me
How could you use a poor maiden so?'”

A gruff voice from the, doorway broke harshly in upon a measure.

“Yes! yes! Well! well! Tunin’ up a larrady, ain’t ye?”

Dorcas knew who it was, without turning round,–a dark, squat woman, broad all over; broad in the hips, the waist, the face, and stamped with the race-mark of high cheekbones. Her thick, straight black hair was cut “tin-basin style;” she wore men’s boots, and her petticoats were nearly up to her knees.

“Good morning, Nancy!” called Dorcas, blithely, wringing out her dishcloth. “Come right in, and sit down.”

Nance Pete (in other words, Nancy the wife of Pete, whose surname was unknown) clumped into the room, and took a chair by the hearth. She drew forth a short black pipe, looked into it discontentedly, and then sat putting her thumb in and out of the bowl.

“You ‘ain’t got a mite o’ terbacker about ye? Hey what?” she asked.

Dorcas had many a time been shocked at the same demand. This morning, something humorous about it struck her, and she laughed.

“You know I haven’t, Nancy Pete! Did you mend that hole in your skirt, as I told you?”

Nance laboriously drew a back breadth of her coarse plaid skirt round to the front, and displayed it, without a word. A three-cornered tear of the kind known as a barn-door had been treated by tying a white string well outside it, and gathering up the cloth, like a bag. Dorcas’s sense of fitness forbade her to see anything humorous in so original a device. She stood before the woman in all the moral excellence of a censor fastidiously clad.

“O Nancy Pete!” she exclaimed. “How could you?”

Nance put her cold pipe in her mouth, and began sucking at the unresponsive stem.

“You ‘ain’t got a bite of anything t’ eat, have ye?” she asked, indifferently.

Dorcas went to the pantry, and brought forth pie, doughnuts and cheese, and a dish of cold beans. The coffee-pot was waiting on the stove. One would have said the visitor had been expected. Nance rose and tramped over to the table. But Dorcas stood firmly in the way.

“No, Nancy, no! You wait a minute! Are you going to meeting to-day?”

“I ‘ain’t had a meal o’ victuals for a week!” remarked Nance, addressing no one in particular.

“Nancy, are you going to meeting?”

“Whose seat be I goin’ to set in?” inquired Nance, rebelliously, yet with a certain air of capitulation.