“Well, of course, ‘tain’t none o’ my business, but seems to me there’ll be a plaguey slim fun’r’l when your turn comes if you’re goin’ to keep up all these old-woman’s fights with everybody ’raound abaout.”
“Naow Alviry!” began Miss Sabrina, in her shrillest and angriest tone; then with a visible effort, as if remembering something, she paused and then went on in a subdued, almost submissive voice, “You knaow jis’ haow Matildy Warren’s used us. From the very day my poor brother William ran off with her Jenny—and goodness knaows whatever possessed him to dew it—thet old woman’s never missed a chance to run us all daown—ez ef she oughtn’t to been praoud o’ th’ day a Fairchild took up with a Warren.”
“Guess you ain’t had none the wu’st of it,” put in Alvira, with sarcasm. “Guess your tongue’s ’baout as sharp as her’n ever was. B’sides she’s bed-ridden naow, ’n’ everybody thought she wouldn’t get threw th’ spring. ’N’ ef Seth’s goin’ to make up to Annie, you ought to begin to smooth things over ’fore she dies. There’s no tellin’ but what she mightn’t leave the farm away f’m th’ girl at th’ last minute, jis’ to spite you.”
“Yeh needn’t talk as if I wanted her pesky farm!”
“Oh, well now, you knaow what I mean’s well’s I dew. What’s th’ use o’ harpin’ on what yer brother William did, or what ole Matildy said, ’fore I was born, when you knaow th’ tew farms jine, and yer heart’s sot on havin’ ’em in one—Yes, ’fore I was born,” repeated the domestic, as if pleased with the implication of juvenility.
Miss Sabrina hesitated, and looked at Alvira meditatively through her spectacles, in momentary doubt about the propriety of saying a sharp thing under all the circumstances; but the temptation was not to be resisted. “ ’N’ you ain’t percisely a chicken yourself, Alviry,” she said and left the kitchen.
Later, when Milton had returned from the pasture, and hung about the kitchen, mending the harness that went with the democrat-wagon while waiting for Leander to return from the cheese factory, Alvira remarked:
“Seems ’if Sabriny’d lost all her sper’t this last day or tew. Never see sech a change. She don’t answer up wuth a cent. I shouldn’t be s’prised if she didn’t tackle Albert’s wife after all. Oh yes, ’n’ you ain’t to go to Warren’s for them chairs. Sa-briny’s dead-set agin that.”
“What’s up?” asked Milton, “Hez Seth broke off with Annie?”
“Don’t knaow’s they ever was anything particular to break off. No, ’t ’aint that; it’s the same raow ’tween the two ole women. Goodness knaows, I’m sick ’n’ tired of hearin’ ’baout it.”
“No, but ain’t Seth ’n’ Annie fixed it up?” persisted Milton; “Daown’t th’ corners they say it’s all settled.” Then he mutteringly added, as he slouched out to meet Leander, who drove up now with a great rattle of empty milk-cans. “I wish’t I was in Seth’s shoes.”
“Oh, you dew, dew yeh!” said Alvira, thus left to herself.
CHAPTER IV.—THE TWO YOUNG WOMEN.
The young girl whose future had been settled down at the corners, came along the road next morning toward the Fairchild house, all unconscious of her destiny. She lived in a small, old-fashioned farm-dwelling back in the fields, alone with her grandmother, and although there was a bitter feud between the heads of the two houses, it had not stopped her from being a familiar and helpful figure in her uncle’s homestead.
Annie Fairchild was a country girl in some senses of the term, calm-faced, clear-eyed, self-reliant among her friends, but with a curious disposition toward timidity in the presence of strangers. She was held to be too serious and “school-ma’am-ish” for pleasant company by most rural maidens of her acquaintance, and the few attempts of young farmers of the country-side to establish friendly relations with her had not been crowned with conspicuous success. It could scarcely be said that she was haughty or cold; no one could demonstrate in detail that her term of schooling in a far-off citified seminary had made her proud or uncivil; but still she had no intimates.
This was the more marked from the fact that she was a pretty girl—or if not precisely pretty, very attractive and winning in face. No other girl of the neighborhood had so fine and regular a profile, or such expressive, dark eyes, or so serenely intelligent an expression. It had been whispered at one time that Reuben Tracy, the school-master, was likely to make a match of it with her, but this had faded away again as a rootless rumor; by this time everybody on the Burfield road tacitly understood that eventually she was to be the wife of her cousin Seth, when it “came time for the two farms to join.” And she had grown accustomed long since to the furtive, half-awed, half-covetous look which men cast upon her, without suspecting the spirit of reluctant renunciation underlying it.
She met Milton Squires on the road, close in front of the Fairchild’s house, this morning, and, nodding to him, passed on. She did not particularly note the gaze he bent upon her as she went by, and which followed her afterward, almost to the Fairchild gate. If she had done so, and could have read all its meaning, she would not have gone on with so unruffled a face, for it was a look to frighten an honest young woman—an intent, hungry, almost wolfish look, unrelieved by so much as a glimmer of the light of manliness.
But she was alike unconscious of his thoughts and of the gossip he had heard at the corners. Certainly no listener who followed her to the gate, where she encountered Seth at work screwing on a new hinge, would have gathered from the tone or words of the greeting on either side any testimony to confirm the common supposition that they were destined for each other.
“Good morning, Seth,” she said, halting while he dragged the great gate open for her, “you’re all through breakfast, I suppose?”
“No, I think Albert and his wife are at the table still. We didn’t call them when the rest got up, you know. They’re not used to country ways.”
“Anybody else here?”
“No, except John.”
“Oh, I’m so glad he came. That Lize Wilkins has been telling everybody he wouldn’t come on Sabrina’s account. And it would have looked so bad.”
“Yes, Lize Wilkins talks too much. All John ever said was that he wouldn’t stay here in the house any more than he could help. It’s too bad he can’t get along better with Aunt; it would make things so much pleasanter.”
“How’s your father, Seth? He seemed at first to take it pretty hard.”
“He appeared a little brighter yesterday, after Albert came, but he’s very poorly this morning. Poor old man, it makes a sad difference with him—more I suppose than with us boys, even with me, who never have been away from her hardly for a day.”
“Yes, Seth, a boy outgrows his mother, I suppose, but for an old couple who have lived together forty years a separation like this must be awful. I shall go up to the house now.”
Seth followed her with his eyes as she walked up the road, past the old-fashioned latticed front door with its heavy fold of crape hanging on the knocker, and turned from sight at the corner of the house; and the look in his face was soft and admiring, even if it was hardly loverlike. In his trouble—and he felt the bereavement most keenly—it seemed restful and good to have such a girl as Annie about, Indeed, a vague