Meadow Grass | Page 9

to see
how 'twas here, before I go. I'm goin' home,--I'm goin' now."
"Why, father!" said Hattie; but she peered more closely into his face,
and her tone changed. "All right," she added, cheerfully. "Sereno'll go
and harness up."
"No; I'm goin' to walk."
"But, father--"
"I don't mean to breakup your stayin' here, nor your mother's. You tell
her how 'twas. I'm goin' to walk."

Hattie turned and whispered to her husband for a moment. Then she
took her father's hand.
"I'll slip into the tent and put you up somethin' for your breakfast and
luncheon," she said. "Sereno's gone to harness; for, pa, you must take
one horse, and you can send Luke back with it Friday, so's we can get
the things home. What do we want of two horses down here, at two and
ninepence a day? I guess I know!"
So Eli yielded; but before his wife appeared, he had turned his back on
the sea, where the rose of dawn was fast unfolding. As he jogged
homeward, the dusty roadsides bloomed with flowers of paradise, and
the insects' dry chirp thrilled like the song of angels. He drove into the
yard just at the turning of the day, when the fragrant smoke of many a
crackling fire curls cheerily upward, in promise of the evening meal.
"What's busted?" asked Luke, swinging himself down from his load of
fodder-corn, and beginning to unharness Doll.
"Oh, nothin'," said Eli, leaping, from the wagon as if twenty years had
been taken from his bones. "I guess I'm too old for such jaunts. I hope
you didn't forgit them cats."

AFTER ALL.
"The land o' gracious!" said Mrs. Lothrop Wilson, laying down her
"drawing-in hook" on the rug stretched between two chairs in the
middle of the kitchen, and getting up to look from the window. "If there
ain't Lucindy comin' out o' the Pitmans' without a thing on her head, an'
all them little curls a-flyin'! An' the old Judge ain't cold in his grave!"
"I guess the Judge won't be troubled with cold, any to speak of, arter
this," said her husband from the window, where he sat eating his
forenoon lunch of apple-pie and cheese. He was a cooper, and perhaps
the pleasantest moment in his day was that when he slipped out of his
shop, leaving a bit of paper tacked on the door to say he was "on
errands," and walked soberly home for his bite and sup. "If he ain't

good an' warm about now, then the Scriptur's ain't no more to be
depended on than a last year's almanac."
"Late Wilson, I'm ashamed of you," retorted his wife, looking at him
with such reproof that, albeit she had no flesh to spare, she made
herself a double chin. "An' he your own uncle, too! Well, he was nigh,
I'll say that for him; an' if he'd had his way, the sun'd ha' riz an' set
when he said the word. But Lucindy's his only darter, an' if she don't so
much as pretend to be a mourner, I guess there ain't nobody that will.
There! don't you say no more! She's comin' in here!"
A light step sounded on the side piazza, and Lucindy came in, with a
little delicate, swaying motion peculiar to her walk. She was a very
slender woman, far past middle life, with a thin, smiling face, light blue
eyes, shining with an eager brightness, and fine hair, which escaped
from its tight twist in little spiral curls about the face.
"How do, Jane?" she said, in an even voice, stirred by a pleasant, reedy
thrill. "How do, Lote?"
Lothrop pushed forward a chair, looking at her with an air of great
kindliness. There was some slight resemblance between them, but the
masculine type seemed entirely lacking in that bright alertness so
apparent in her. Mrs. Wilson nodded, and went back to her drawing-in.
She was making a very red rose with a pink middle.
"I dunno's I can say I'm surprised to see you, Lucindy," she began, with
the duteous aspect of one forced to speak her disapproval, "for I
ketched you comin' out o' the Pitmans' yard."
"Yes," said Lucindy, smiling, and plaiting her skirt between her
nervous fingers. "Yes, I went in to see if they'd let me take Old
Buckskin a spell to-morrow."
"What under the sun--" began Mrs. Wilson; but her husband looked at
her, and she stopped. He had become so used to constituting himself
Lucindy's champion in the old Judge's day, now just ended, that he kept
an unremitting watch on any one who might threaten her peace. But

Lucindy evidently guessed at the unspoken question.
"I should have come here, if I'd expected to drive," she said. "But I
thought maybe