FullReads

“There was two or three o’ the folks round home that acted real warm-hearted towards me, an’ urged me to come an’ winter with ’em,” continued the exile; “an’ this mornin’ I wished I’d agreed to, ’twas so hard to break away. But now it’s done I feel more’n ever it’s best. I couldn’t bear to live right in sight o’ the old place, and come spring I shouldn’t ‘prove of nothing Is’iah ondertakes to do with the land. Oh, dear sakes! now it comes hard with me not to have had no child’n. When I was young an’ workin’ hard and into everything, I felt kind of free an’ superior to them that was so blessed, an’ their houses cluttered up from mornin’ till night, but I tell ye it comes home to me now. I’d be most willin’ to own to even Is’iah, mean’s he is; but I tell ye I’d took it out of him ‘fore he was a grown man, if there’d be’n any virtue in cow-hidin’ of him. Folks don’t look like wild creatur’s for nothin’. Is’iah’s got fox blood in him, an’ p’r’haps ‘t is his misfortune. His own mother always favored the looks of an old fox, true’s the world; she was a poor tool,–a poor tool! I d’know’s we ought to blame him same’s we do.

“I’ve always been a master proud woman, if I was riz among the pastures,” Mrs. Peet added, half to herself. There was no use in saying much to her; she was conscious of little beside her own thoughts and the smouldering excitement caused by this great crisis in her simple existence. Yet the atmosphere of her loneliness, uncertainty, and sorrow was so touching that after scolding again at her nephew’s treachery, and finding the tears come fast to my eyes as she talked, I looked intently out of the car window, and tried to think what could be done for the poor soul. She was one of the old-time people, and I hated to have her go away; but even if she could keep her home she would soon be too feeble to live there alone, and some definite plan must be made for her comfort. Farms in that neighborhood were not valuable. Perhaps through the agency of the law and quite in secret, Isaiah Peet could be forced to give up his unrighteous claim. Perhaps, too, the Winn girls, who were really no longer young, might have saved something, and would come home again. But it was easy to make such pictures in one’s mind, and I must do what I could through other people, for I was just leaving home for a long time. I wondered sadly about Mrs. Peet’s future, and the ambitious Isabella, and the favorite Sister Winn’s daughters, to whom, with all their kindliness of heart, the care of so old and perhaps so dependent an aunt might seem impossible. The truth about life in Shrewsbury would soon be known; more than half the short journey was already past.

To my great pleasure, my fellow-traveler now began to forget her own troubles in looking about her. She was an alert, quickly interested old soul, and this was a bit of neutral ground between the farm and Shrewsbury, where she was unattached and irresponsible. She had lived through the last tragic moments of her old life, and felt a certain relief, and Shrewsbury might be as far away as the other side of the Rocky Mountains for all the consciousness she had of its real existence. She was simply a traveler for the time being, and began to comment, with delicious phrases and shrewd understanding of human nature, on two or three persons near us who attracted her attention.

“Where do you s’pose they be all goin’?” she asked contemptuously. “There ain’t none on ’em but what looks kind o’ respectable. I’ll warrant they’ve left work to home they’d ought to be doin’. I knowed, if ever I stopped to think, that cars was hived full o’ folks, an’ wa’n’t run to an’ fro for nothin’; but these can’t be quite up to the average, be they? Some on ’em’s real thrif’less; guess they’ve be’n shoved out o’ the last place, an’ goin’ to try the next one,–like me, I suppose you’ll want to say! Jest see that flauntin’ old creatur’ that looks like a stopped clock. There! everybody can’t be o’ one goodness, even preachers.”