FullReads

“I’m worried to death to have him over there all by himself,” said she. “S’pose he should be sick in the night!”

“You’d got over,” answered the schoolmaster easily.

“Well, s’pose he couldn’t git me no word?”

“Oh, you’d know it! You ‘re that sort.”

Miss Susan laughed softly, and so seemed to put away her recurrent anxiety. She came back to her knitting.

“How long has his wife been dead?” asked the schoolmaster.

“Two year. He an’ Jenny got along real well together, but sence September, when she went away, I guess he’s found it pretty dull pickin’. I do all I can, but land! ‘t ain’t like havin’ a woman in the house from sunrise to set.”

“There’s nothing like that,” agreed the wise young schoolmaster. “Now let’s play some more. Let’s plan what we’d like to do to-morrow for all the folks we know, and let’s not give them a thing they need, but just the ones they’d like.”

Miss Susan put down her knitting again. She never could talk to the schoolmaster and keep at work. It made her dreamy, exactly as it did to sit in the hot summer sunshine, with the droning of bees in the air.

“Well,” said she, “there’s old Ann Wheeler that lives over on the turnpike. She don’t want for nothin’, but she keeps her things packed away up garret, an’ lives like a pig.”

“‘Sold her bed and lay in the straw.'”

“That’s it, on’y she won’t sell nuthin’. I’d give her a house all winders, so ‘t she couldn’t help lookin’ out, an’ velvet carpets ‘t she’d got to walk on.”

“Well, there’s Cap’n Ben. The boys say he’s out of his head a good deal now; he fancies himself at sea and in foreign countries.”

“Yes, so they say. Well, I’d let him set down a spell in Solomon’s temple an’ look round him. My sake! do you remember about the temple? Why, the nails was all gold. Don’t you wish we’d lived in them times? Jest think about the wood they had–cedars o’ Lebanon an’ fir-trees. You know how he set folks to workin’ in the mountains. I’ve al’ays thought I’d like to ben up on them mountains an’ heard the axes ringin’ an’ listened to the talk. An’ then there was pomegranates an’ cherubim, an’ as for silver an’ gold, they were as common as dirt. When I was a little girl, I learnt them chapters, an’ sometimes now, when I’m settin’ by the fire, I say over that verse about the ‘man of Tyre, skillful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson.’ My! ain’t it rich?”

She drew a long breath of surfeited enjoyment. The schoolmaster’s eyes burned under his heavy brows.

“Then things smelt so good in them days,” continued Miss Susan. “They had myrrh an’ frankincense, an’ I dunno what all. I never make my mincemeat ‘thout snuffin’ at the spice-box to freshen up my mind. No matter where I start, some way or another I al’ays git back to Solomon. Well, if Cap’n Ben wants to see foreign countries, I guess he’d be glad to set a spell in the temple. Le’s have on another stick–that big one thereby you. My! it’s the night afore Christmas, ain’t it? Seems if I couldn’t git a big enough blaze. Pile it on. I guess I’d as soon set the chimbly afire as not!”

There was something overflowing and heady in her enjoyment. It exhilarated the schoolmaster, and he lavished stick after stick on the ravening flames. The maple hardened into coals brighter than its own panoply of autumn; the delicate bark of the birch flared up and perished.

“Miss Susan,” said he, “don’t you want to see all the people in the world?”

“Oh, I dunno! I’d full as lieves set here an’ think about ’em. I can fix ’em up full as well in my mind, an’ perhaps they suit me better ‘n if I could see ’em. Sometimes I set ’em walkin’ through this kitchen, kings an’ queens an’ all. My! how they do shine, all over precious stones. I never see a di’mond, but I guess I know pretty well how’t would look.”