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Heartsease
by
“Don’t ye never help ’round, washin’-days?”
“Law, no! Mary won’t hear to ‘t. She’d ruther have the dishes wait till everything’s on the line; an’ if I stir a step to go into the gardin to pick a ‘mess o’ beans, or kill a currant worm, she’s right arter me. ‘Mother, don’t you fall!’ she says, a dozen ‘times a day. ‘I dunno what David’d do to me, if I let anything happen to you.’ An’ ‘David, he’s ketched it, too. One night, ‘long towards Thanksgivin’ time, I kicked the soapstone out o’ bed, an’ he come runnin’ up as if he was bewitched. ‘Mother,’ says he, ‘did you fall? You ‘ain’t had a stroke, have ye?'”
Old Lady Lamson laughed huskily; her black eyes shone, and her cap ribbons nodded, and danced, but there was an ironical ring to her merriment.
“Do tell!” responded Mrs. Pettis, in her ruminating voice. “Well, things were different when we was young married folks, an’ used to do our own spinnin’ an’ weavin’.”
“I guess so!” Mrs. Lamson dropped her busy hands in her lap, and leaned back a moment, in eager retrospect. “Do you recollect that Friday we spun from four o’clock in the mornin’ till six that evenin’, because the men-folks had gone in the ma’sh, an’ all we had to do was to stop an’ feed the critters? An’ Hiram Peasley come along with tinware, an’ you says, ‘If you’re a mind to stop at my house, an’ throw a colander an’ a long-handled dipper over the fence, under the flowerin’-currant, an’ wait till next time for your pay, I’ll take ’em,’ says you. ‘But I ain’t goin’ to leave off spinnin’ for anything less ‘n Gabriel’s trumpet,’ says you. I remember your sayin’ that, as if ’twas only yisterday; an’ arter you said it, you kind o’ drawed down your face an’ looked scairt. An’ I never thought on’t ag’in till next Sabbath evenin’, when Jim Bellows rose to speak, an’ made some handle about the Day o’ Judgment, an’ then I tickled right out.”
“How you do set by them days!” said Mrs. Pettis, striving to keep a steady face, though her heavy sides were shaking. “I guess you remember ’em better ‘n your prayers!”
“Yes, I laughed out loud, an’ you passed me a pep’mint over the pew, an’ looked as if you was goin’ to cry. ‘Don’t,’ says you; an’ it sort o’ come over me you knew what I was laughin’ at. Why, if there ain’t John Freeman stoppin’ here,–Mary’s sister’s brother-in-law, you know. Lives down to Bell P’int. Guess he’s pullin’ up to give the news.”
Mrs. Pettis came slowly to her feet, and scanned the farmer, who was hitching his horse to the fence. When he had gone round to the back door, she turned, and grasped her umbrella with a firmer hand.
“Well, I guess ‘twon’t pay me to set down ag’in,” she announced. “I’m goin’ to take it easy on the way home. I dunno but I’ll let down the bars, an’ poke a little ways into the north pastur’, an’ see if I can’t git a mite o’ pennyr’yal. I’ll be in ag’in to-morrer or next day.”
“So do, so do,” returned Mrs. Lamson.
“‘Tain’t no use to ask you to come down, I s’pose? You don’t git, out so fur, nowadays.”
“No,” said the other, still with that latent touch of sarcasm in her voice. “If I should fall, there’d be a great hurrah, boys,–‘fire on the mountain, run, boys, run!'”
Mrs. Pettis toiled out into the road; and Old Lady Lamson, laying her knitting on the table, bent forward, not to watch her out of sight, but to make sure whether she really would stop at the north pasture.
“No, she’s goin’ by,” she said aloud, with evident relief. “No, she ain’t either. I’ll be whipped if she ain’t lettin’ down the bars! ‘Twould smell kind o’ good, I declare!”
She was still peering forward, one slender hand on the window-sill, when Mary, a pretty young woman, with two nervous lines between her eyes, came hurrying in.