"Well!" said Mrs. Wilson. Her tone spoke volumes of conflicting commentary.
"You got a saddle?" asked Lucindy, turning to her cousin. "I thought I remembered you had one laid away, up attic. I suppose you'd just as soon I'd take it?"
He was neither shocked nor amused. He had been looking at her very sadly, as one who read in every word the entire tragedy of a repressed and lonely life.
"Yes, we have, Lucindy," he said, gently, quieting his wife by a motion of the hand, "but 'tain't what you think. It's a man's saddle. You'd have to set straddle.
"Oh!" said Lucindy, a faint shade of disappointment clouding her face. "Well, no matter! I guess they've got one down to the Mardens'. Jane, should you just as soon come round this afternoon, and look over some bunnit trimmin's with me? I took two kinds of flowers home from Miss West's, and I can't for my life tell which to have."
"Ain't you goin' to wear black?" Mrs. Wilson spoke now in double italics.
"Oh, no! I don't feel called on to do that. I always liked bright colors, and I don't know's 'twould be real honest in me to put on mournin' when I didn't feel it."
"'Honor thy father'—" began Jane, in spite of her husband's warning hand; but Lucindy interrupted her, with some perplexity.
"I have, Jane, I have! I honored father all my life, just as much as ever I could. I done everything he ever told me, little and big! No, though, there's one thing I never fell in with. I did cheat him once. I don't know but I'm sorry for that, now it's all past and gone!"
Her cousin had been drumming absently on the window-sill, but he looked up with awakened interest. Mrs. Wilson, too, felt a wholesale curiosity, and she, at least, saw no reason for curbing it.
"What was it, Lucindy?" she asked. "The old hunks!" she repeated to herself, like an anathema.
Lucindy began her confession, with eyes down-dropped and a faltering voice.
"Father wanted I should have my hair done up tight and firm. So I pretended I done the best I could with it. I told him these curls round my face and down in my neck was too short, and I couldn't pin 'em up. But they wa'n't curls, and they wouldn't ha' been short if I hadn't cut 'em. For every night, and sometimes twice a day, I curled 'em on a pipe-stem."
"Ain't them curls nat'ral, Lucindy?" cried Mrs. Wilson. "Have you been fixin' 'em to blow round your face that way, all these years?"
"I begun when I was a little girl," said Lucindy, guiltily. "It did seem kind o' wrong, but I took real pleasure in it!"
Lothrop could bear no more. He wanted to wipe his eyes, but he chose instead to walk straight out of the room and down to his shop. His wife could only express a part of her amazement by demanding, in a futile sort of way—
"Where'd you get the pipe?"
"I stole the first one from a hired man we had," said Lucindy, her cheeks growing pink. "Sometimes I had to use slate-pencils."
There was no one else to administer judgment, and Mrs. Wilson felt the necessity.
"Well," she began, "an' you can set there, tellin' that an' smilin'—"
"My smilin' don't mean any more'n some other folks' cryin', I guess," said Lucindy, smiling still more broadly. "I begun that more'n thirty years ago. I looked into the glass one day, and I see the corners of my mouth were goin' down. Sharper 'n, vinegar, I was! So I says to myself, 'I can smile, whether or no. Nobody can't help that!' And I did, and now I guess I don't know when I do it."
"Well!"
Lucindy rose suddenly and brushed her lap, as if she dusted away imaginary cares.
"There!" she exclaimed, "I've said more this mornin' than I have for forty year! Don't you lead me on to talk about what's past and gone! The only thing is, I mean to have a good time now, what there is left of it. Some things you can't get back, and some you can. Well, you step round this afternoon, won't you?"
"I dunno's I can. John's goin' to bring Claribel up, to spend the arternoon an' stay to supper."
"Why, dear heart! that needn't make no difference. I should admire to have her, too. I'll show her some shells and coral I found this mornin', up attic."
Lucindy had almost reached the street when she turned, as with a sudden resolution, and retraced her steps.
"Jane," she called, looking in at the kitchen window. "It's a real bright day, pretty as any 't ever I see. Don't you worry for fear o' my disturbin' them that's gone, if I do try to ketch at somethin' pleasant. If they're wiser now, I guess they'll be glad I had sense enough left to do it!"
That afternoon, Mrs. Wilson, in her best gingham and checked sunbonnet, took her way along the village street to the old Judge Wilson house. It was a colonial mansion, sitting austerely back in a square yard. In spite of its prosperity, everything about it wore a dreary air, as if it were tired of being too well kept; for houses are like people, and carry their own indefinable atmosphere with them. Mrs. Wilson herself lived on a narrower and more secluded street, though it was said that her husband, if he had not defied the old Judge in some crucial matter, might have studied law with him, and possibly shared his speculations in wool. Then he, too, might have risen to be one of the first men in the county, instead of working, in his moderate fashion, for little more than day's wages. Claribel, a pale, dark-eyed child, also dressed in her best gingham, walked seriously by her grandmother's side. Lucindy was waiting for them at the door.
"I declare!" she called, delightedly. "I was 'most afraid you'd forgot to come! Well, Claribel, if you 'ain't grown! They'll have to put a brick on your head, or you'll be taller'n grandma."
Claribel submitted to be kissed, and they entered the large, cool sitting-room, where they took off their things.
"You make yourself at home, Jane," said Lucindy, fluttering about, in pleasant excitement. "I ain't goin' to pay you a mite of attention till I see Claribel fixed. Now, Claribel, remember! you can go anywheres you're a mind to. And you can touch anything there is. You won't find a thing a little girl can hurt. Here, you come here where I be, and look across the entry. See that big lamp on the table? Well, if you unhook them danglin' things and peek through 'em, you'll find the brightest colors! My, how pretty they be! I've been lookin' through 'em this mornin'. I used to creep in and do it when I was little," she continued, in an aside to Mrs. Wilson. "Once I lost one." A strange look settled on her face; she was recalling a bitter experience. "There!" she said, releasing Claribel with a little hug, "now run along! If you look on the lower shelf of the what-not, you'll see some shells and coral I put there for just such a little girl."
Claribel walked soberly away to her playing.
"Don't you hurt nothin'!" called Mrs. Wilson; and Claribel responded properly—
"No, 'm."
"There!" said Lucindy, watching the precise little back across the hall, "Now le's talk a mite about vanity. You reach me that green box behind your chair. Here's the best flowers Miss West had for what I wanted. Here's my bunnit, too. You see what you think."
She set the untrimmed bonnet on her curls, and laid first a bunch of bright chrysanthemums against it, and then some strange lavender roses. The roses turned her complexion to an ivory whiteness, and her anxious, intent expression combined strangely with that undesirable effect.
"My soul, Lucindy!" cried Mrs. Wilson, startled into a more robust frankness than usual, "you do look like the Old Nick!"
A shade came over Miss Lucindy's honest face. It seemed, for a moment, as if she were going to cry.
"Don't you like 'em, Jane?" she asked, appealingly. "Won't neither of 'em do?"
Mrs. Wilson was not incapable of compunction, but she felt also the demands of the family honor.
"Well, Lucindy,"