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“Oh, don’t I, Nancy! there never was anything like it. Such cold potatoes–“

“B’iled in the pot-liquor!” she whispered, a knowing gleam in her blue eyes. “That’s the way; on’y everybody don’t know. An’ do you remember the year we had greens way into the fall, an’ I wouldn’t tell you what they was? Well, I will, now; there was chickweed, an’ pusley, an’ mustard, an’ Aaron’s-rod, an’ I dunno what all.”

“Not Aaron’s-rod, Nancy! it never would have been so good!”

“It’s truth an’ fact! I b’iled Aaron’s-rod, an’ you eat it. That was the year Mis’ Blaisdell was mad because you had so many meals over to my house, an’ said it was the last time she’d take summer boarders an’ have the neighbors feed ’em.”

“They were good old days, Nancy!”

“I guess they were! yes, indeed, I guess so! Now, dear, I s’pose you’ve heard what I’ve been through, sence you went away?”

I put the thin hand to my cheek.

“Yes,” I said, “I have heard.”

“Well, now, I want to tell you the way it ‘pears to me. You’ll hear the neighbors’ side, an’ arter I’m gone, they’ll tell you I was under-witted or bold. They’ve been proper good to me sence I’ve been sick, but law! what do they know about it, goin’ to bed at nine o’clock, an’ gittin’ up to feed the chickens an’ ride to meetin’ with their husbands? No more’n the dead! An’ so I want to tell ye my story, myself. Now, don’t you mind my coughing dear! It don’t hurt, to speak of, an’ I feel better arter it.

“Well, I dunno where to begin. The long an’ short of it was, dear, James he got kind o’ uneasy on land, an’ then he was tried with me, an’ then he told me, one night, when he spoke out, that he didn’t care about me as he used to, an’ he never should, an’ we couldn’t live no longer under the same roof. He was goin’ off the next day to sea, or to the devil, he said, so he needn’t go crazy seein’ Mary Ann Worthen’s face lookin’ at him all the time. It ain’t any use tryin’ to tell how I felt. Some troubles ain’t no more ‘n a dull pain, an’ some are like cuts an’ gashes. You can feel your heart drop, drop, like water off the eaves. Mine dropped for a good while arter that. Well, you see I’d been through the fust stages of it. I’d been eat up by jealousy, an’ I’d slaved like a dog to git him back; but now it had got beyond such folderol. He was in terrible trouble, an’ I’d got to git him out. An’ I guess ’twas then that I begun to feel as if I was his mother, instid of his wife. ‘Jim,’ says I, (somehow I have to Say ‘James,’ now we’re separated!) ‘don’t you fret. I’ll go off an’ leave ye, an’ you can get clear o’ me accordin’ to law, if you want to. I’m sure you can. I sha’n’t care.’ He turned an’ looked at me, as if I was crazed or he was himself, ‘You won’t care?’ he says. ‘No,’ says I, ‘I sha’n’t care.’ I said it real easy, for ’twas true. Somehow, I’d got beyond carin’. My heart dropped blood, but I couldn’t bear to have him in trouble. ‘They al’ays told me I was cut out for an old maid,” I says, ‘an’ I guess I be. Housekeepin’ ‘s a chore, anyway. You let all the stuff set right here jest as we’ve had it, an’ ask Cap’n Fuller to come an’ bring his chist; an’ I’ll settle down in the Willer Brook house an’ make button-holes. It’s real pretty work.’ You see, the reason I was so high for it was ‘t I knew if he went to sea, he’d git in with a swearin’, drinkin’ set, as he did afore, an’ in them days such carryin’s-on were dretful to me. If I’d known he’d marry, I dunno what course I should ha’ took; for nothin’ could ha’ made that seem right to me, arter all had come and gone. But I jest thought how James was a dretful handy man about the house, an’ I knew he set by Cap’n Fuller. The Cap’n ‘ain’t no real home, you know, an’ I thought they’d admire to bach it together.”