The Lady of the Aroostook | Page 3

pink: all clean
white paint, with a solid mahogany edge to the berth, and a
mahogany-framed lookin'-glass on one side, and little winders at the
top, and white lace curtains to the bed. He says he had it fixed up for
his wife, and he lets Lyddy have it all for her own. She can set there
and do her mendin' when she don't feel like comin' into the cabin. The
cabin--well, I wish you could see that cabin, Maria! The first mate is a
fine-appearing man, too. Some of the sailors looked pretty rough; but I
guess it was as much their clothes as anything; and I d'know as Lyddy'd
have a great deal to do with them, any way." The old man's treble
ceased, and at the same moment the shrilling of a locust in one of the
door-yard maples died away; both voices, arid, nasal, and high, lapsed
as one into a common silence.
The woman stirred impatiently in her chair, as if both voices had been
repeating something heard many times before. They seemed to renew
her discontent. "Yes, I know; I know all that, father. But it ain't the
mahogany I think of. It's the child's gettin' there safe and well."
"Well," said the old man, "I asked the captain about the seasickness,
and he says she ain't nigh so likely to be sick as she would on the
steamer; the motion's more regular, and she won't have the smell of the
machinery. That's what he said. And he said the seasickness would do
her good, any way. I'm sure I don't want her to be sick any more than
you do, Maria." He added this like one who has been unjustly put upon
his defense.
They now both remained silent, the woman rocking herself and fanning,
and the old man holding his fingers suspended from their drubbing
upon the table, and looking miserably from the woman in the
rocking-chair to the girl at the window, as if a strict inquiry into the

present situation might convict him of it in spite of his innocence. The
girl still sat with her face turned from them, and still from time to time
she put her handkerchief to her eyes and wiped away the tears. The
locust in the maple began again, and shrilled inexorably. Suddenly the
girl leaped to her feet.
"There's the stage!" she cried, with a tumult in her voice and manner,
and a kind of choking sob. She showed, now that she stood upright, the
slim and elegant shape which is the divine right of American girlhood,
clothed with the stylishness that instinctive taste may evoke, even in a
hill town, from study of paper patterns, Harper's Bazar, and the
costume of summer boarders. Her dress was carried with spirit and
effect.
"Lydia Blood!" cried the other woman, springing responsively to her
feet, also, and starting toward the girl, "don't you go a step without you
feel just like it! Take off your things this minute and stay, if you
wouldn't jus' as lives go. It's hard enough to have you go, child, without
seemin' to force you!"
"Oh, aunt Maria," answered the girl, piteously, "it almost kills me to go;
but _I'm_ doing it, not you. I know how you'd like to have me stay. But
don't say it again, or I couldn't bear up; and I'm going now, if I have to
be carried."
The old man had risen with the others; he was shorter than either, and
as he looked at them he seemed half awed, half bewildered, by so much
drama. Yet it was comparatively very little. The girl did not offer to
cast herself upon her aunt's neck, and her aunt did not offer her an
embrace, it was only their hearts that clung together as they simply
shook hands and kissed each other. Lydia whirled away for her last
look at herself in the glass over the table, and her aunt tremulously
began to put to rights some slight disorder in the girl's hat.
"Father," she said sharply, "are Lyddy's things all ready there by the
door, so's not to keep Ezra Perkins waitin'? You know he always
grumbles so. And then he gets you to the cars so't you have to wait half
an hour before they start." She continued to pin and pull at details of
Lydia's dress, to which she descended from her hat. "It sets real nice on
you, Lyddy. I guess you'll think of the time we had gettin' it made up,
when you wear it out there." Miss Maria Latham laughed nervously.
With a harsh banging and rattling, a yellow Concord coach drew up at

the gate where Miss Maria had stopped the hearse. The driver got down,
and without a word put