The Wedding King

‘WELL, now,’ said Aunt Nabby Strong, ‘to think you should ha’ remembered that!’

She stood in the kitchen, in sunshine the brighter from the facets of the snow, and turned on her thin old finger a wedding ring. She was a sweet old lady, straight and tall, a complexity of kindliness and the sobriety of long experience in her withered face. Her daughter, Nancy Hart, the moral of her, so far as youth can echo age, stood by, with keen delight upon her face. Nancy still had on her outdoor things, but she had not been able to wait for more than a second after crossing the sill before she gave her mother the present she had brought.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Strong, ‘I know exactly what I said, an’ you took it up an’ remembered it, an’ now you’ve spent your money so’s’t I should have a ring. If you ain’t the beater! Well, you always was, Nancy. Anybody never had to say what they wanted twice over but there ’t was.’

Nancy was throwing off her enveloping shawl and the jacket underneath.

‘I dunno but I ought to told Sarah,’ she said, ‘and let her come in on it. But I was so mean and selfish, I just would n’t, that’s all.’

Mrs. Strong still stood turning the ring round and round upon her finger. A little shadow lay for a moment on her face.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I guess Sarah would n’t ha’ took any great int’rest. An’ I’d ruther have it from you anyways.’

This last was the kind of speech Mrs. Strong never really permitted herself; but she had had rather a trying hour with Sarah that morning, and the memory of it still abode with her. ‘Come. You se’ down an’ get het through,’ said she, with the intent of dismissing Sarah from their minds.

They drew up to the stove and turned their dress skirts back from the too impetuous heat, and Nancy spoke.

‘Well, mother, that ring does look kinder nice. What you s’pose Sarah’ll say?’

‘ I dunno,’ owned Mrs. Strong, on her guard now against any implication of Sarah. ‘She was here anyways when I said what I did that led to ’t. Lemme see. I says, “Just to think you girls both got weddin’ rings, an’ my finger’s bare as a bone.’”

‘Well, it’s queer,’ said Nancy, ‘but I never thought of it till that minute. “Why,” says I to myself, “that’s so. Mother never’s wore a weddin’ ring.” ’

‘Your father never thought of it, I guess,’ said Mrs. Strong defensively. ‘I vow I never did. You see we lived way off next door to nowhere, an’ then we went out west, an’ we worked so hard I guess we should n’t ha’ had time to concern ourselves with weddin’ rings. My hands were in the dough or in the suds most o’ them years, an’ I guess nobody’d seen whether I had a weddin’ ring or not. I guess your father’d laugh if he could know my darter had to up an’ buy me one.’

They laughed together tenderly, and then Nancy turned to what had been worrying her all that morning.

‘You thought best to have Sarah go to the depot after Lyddy?’ she said.

Cousin Lydia was coming that day. The visit was of more or less importance, for Lydia was going out west to work, and Aunt Nabby thought she’d better look over the two chests of her mother’s things and see what she wanted to take with her, since she might not come back.

Mrs. Strong’s brow was wrinkled now with a returned anxiety.

‘Well, no,’ she said, ’I did n’t think ’t was best. I wanted to send Hermie Yorke, but Sarah seemed possessed to go an’ she got the better o’ me. She ’peared here with the colt, an hour or more ’fore train time, an’ nothin’ for it but she must go herself.’

‘You s’pose she’ll say anything to Lyddy?’ Nancy asked.

The fine lines in her mother’s forehead seemed to spring out by exact duplication in her own.

‘I dunno,’ said Mrs. Strong. ‘I talked it over with her ’fore she went. I said, “Now you might as well look it in the face. Lyddy’s had a baby, an’ the baby’s died. An’ Lyddy wa’n’t married, an’ the reason she wa’n’t was because John Wilde was kinder crazed with all the queer meetin’s he’d been to an’ the books he’d read, an’ he thought marryin’ was beneath him.’”

‘I s’pose Lyddy thought so, too,’ said Nancy wonderingly.

‘Course she did. Course Lyddy thought so. The sun rose an’ set in John Wilde, an’ she believed every individual thing he told her to. “Well,” says I to Sarah, “John’s dead, an’ the baby’s dead, an’ Lyddy’s heart’s broke. That’s all there is to it. If John was alive, mebbe we could pry his eyes open some way or another, an’ make him see what ’t is to be a God-fearin’ man that wants to live as other men do. But he’s dead,” I says, “an’ we can’t go to takin’ it out o’ Lyddy.’”

This was a long speech for Aunt Nabby Strong, and she ended breathlessly and with appealing eyes bent on her daughter. They asked for confirmation.

‘Well,’ said Nancy, ‘seems if you put it pretty plain. But Sarah’s so high-spirited.’

‘High-sperited! I guess she is,’ said her mother, as if there would be a general illumination if she told all she knew. ‘Sarah acts as if she was the judge of all the earth. Well, there, I did n’t mean to go so fur as that, but Sarah’s no compassion. She never did have, an’ she ain’t got any now.’

‘She ain’t much like you and father,’ hesitated Nancy.

She was not very happy about Sarah. She was always trying to remember they were own sisters and to accept her without question on that account; but there was an unknown something in Sarah that forbade.

‘Don’t I hear bells?’ said Mrs. Strong. ‘It’s early for ’em, but that colt clips it right along.’

She dropped her dress skirt and went to the window, while the bells jingled nearer.

‘Well, we need n’t ha’ worried,’ said she. Her voice bespoke the keenest disappointment. ‘Lyddy ain’t come, after all.’

Nancy, too, was on her feet.

‘S’ pose I’d better go out and help unharness?’ she questioned.

‘No, she’s brought Hermie Yorke along. She’s comin’ right in.’

In a moment Sarah was stamping off the snow in the shed, and she entered with a breeze: a tall, robust woman of a bright complexion and black eyes under heavy brows. She gave a little nod to Nancy, but there were evidently things on her mind to crowd out common greetings. She threw off her wellfitting coat, and Nancy and her mother, suddenly grown smaller by the nearness of her abundance, stood doubtfully waiting for her to speak.

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Strong at length, when Sarah emerged in all her matronly strength and fullness, and rubbed her hands slightly as if she scorned the enervating warmth of stoves, ‘so Lyddy did n’t come.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Sarah, in her full voice with the metallic quality in it, sometimes scornful, sometimes only forceful in an unclassified way. ‘Lyddy’s come.’

‘Why, where is she?’ said Mrs. Strong.

‘She got out at the cross-road. Said she’s goin’ to walk the rest o’ the way.’

In spite of themselves, Nancy and her mother exchanged a quick look of understanding.

‘Well,’ Mrs. Strong temporized, ‘seems if that was kind of a foolish thing to do when she might ha’ rid to the door.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Sarah. She had seated herself at the table and began opening a neat roll of work. ‘I had these shirts all ready to cut out, and so I thought I’d bring ’em along. Oh, no, she give the reason. ’T was just such a reason as you’d expect Lyddy to give, considerin’ everything that’s come and gone. She said ’t was walkin’ through the cross-road just such a day as this when she fust see John Wilde, and she wanted to go through it again.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Strong, inaptly, ‘I should think she would, poor child!’

Sarah had a long pair of scissors in her hand. She was just rising to snip the unbleached cloth before her.

‘You should think she would?’ she repeated. ‘And you’re a respectable married woman, Mother Strong.’

‘Well, I guess I be,’ put in Mrs. Strong. Fire was in her eye; her soft cheek flushed. ‘Nancy and I are both of us respectable, and so be you.’

‘And Lyddy’s done what she has, and you can say “poor child”?’

Aunt Nabby had got a grip on herself now, the grip invented for Sarah only.

‘Sarah,’ said she, ‘sometimes it seems as if you had n’t got no more compassion than if you was born yesterday.’

But Sarah did not hear. She was bending over the table, cutting the long perfectly accurate slashes that led to shirts.

‘I talked to Lyddy,’ said she. ‘I done that before we got to the crossroad.’

A look of whimsical shrewdness ran over Aunt Nabby’s face.

‘Why, dear heart,’said she, ‘that’s why Lyddy got out. I can see it all as plain as day. Lyddy’d bore all she could, an’ the only thing she could do was to jump out an’ walk along that road an’ call up the image of somebody ’t was kind to her.’

‘And when she comes here, I want you should talk to her,’ said Sarah. ‘She says she sha’n’t deny anything about what’s happened. She says it might ha’ been mistaken, but’t wa’n’t wicked, and as for John Wilde, he’s one o’ the saints o’ the earth. Mebbe she’ll hear to you, but she won’t to me. I’ve said my say.’

‘That’s right, Sarah,’ said Aunt Nabby quietly. ‘Don’t you say no more.’

And then the door opened, and Lyddy came in. Lyddy was young and fresh and gentle, but the red of the cold was in her cheeks, and a spark of some rebellion in her eyes. At sight of her with that surface brilliancy overspread upon her face, Aunt Nabby was vaguely startled and drew near her in a mute questioning. Not this was the Lyddy she had known, in the wistful gentlehood of her youth; and the Lyddy she had imagined, in the shadow of the tree of grief, had been a bowed and sunken creature. This girl held her head high and looked at even Aunt Nabby with a defiant questioning. ‘How are you going to receive me?’ said the look. ‘Then I will tell you what manner I shall wear.’

But when Aunt Nabby had kissed her, and ventured something about the cold, and Nancy had taken her coat and hat away from her and brought a chair to the fire with more murmurous sympathy, the ice that seemed to have formed over her look and manner melted, and they saw Lyddy as she used to be. But her reddened hands were scarcely warm before she asked abruptly, —

‘Where’s mother’s things?’

There were two hair trunks by the dresser. Aunt Nabby indicated them with a nod.

‘I had ’em brought down here,’ she said. ‘I did n’t want you to go up in that cold chamber such a day as this.’

Lyddy seemed to have fallen into a musing, — this at the mention of her mother’s name.

‘I don’t know’s I can take many of the things with me,’ she said. ‘You see I don’t know yet whether I shall suit.’

‘Why, you leave ’em long as ever you like,’ said Aunt Nabby. ‘Only I thought you’d mebbe want to go over ’em an’ see if there wa’n’t suthin’ ’t would be a comfort to you.’

Sarah was still taking her long relentless slashes where every one told. Now she sat down and, gathering the cloth toward her, began to baste.

‘You’ll have to be pretty careful, Lyddy,’ she said, ‘goin’ off on such a jaunt, to fall in with the right kind o’ folks.’

Lyddy turned upon her the hostile gaze Sarah was always awakening in her kind.

‘I’m goin’ with Miss Peterson,’ she said.

There was a cold hostility in her tone, and Aunt Nabby glanced at her out of a sorrowful surprise. Again she did not seem the same Lyddy at all. But suddenly Aunt Nabby smiled a little. This was Sarah’s Lyddy, she remembered. Their own Lyddy would n’t have a chance to show herself while Sarah was in hail.

‘I guess folks that are good enough for Miss Peterson to know are good enough for me.’

‘Now jest what be you goin’ to do out there?’ asked Aunt Nabby comfortably. ‘Nancy understood from your letter ’t was a kind of a housekeeper’s place.’

‘Miss Peterson’s sister’s got a sanitarium where folks go when they’re gettin’ well,’ said Lyddy. There was an eagerness of interest in her air. She seemed to have forgotten Sarah. ‘ I’m goin’ to fill in chinks and do anything I’m told, and if they think it’s worth while, I ’m goin’ to take a course and be a nurse.’

This she said with pride.

‘You never’d get your diploma,’ said Sarah. ‘You might as well face that at the start ’fore you set your heart on it.’

‘I don’t know why I could n’t be a nurse,’ said Lyddy. She seemed unable now to summon up the defiance that was Sarah’s due. ‘ I’m young and I’m strong, and mother used to say I took the best care of her of anybody, ’cept Aunt Nabby, maybe.’

‘I was n’t referrin’ to that,’ said Sarah. ‘If you force me to say it, I can’t do no less than tell you nurses have to be of good character. They look ’em up.’

‘Sarah! Sarah!’ said Aunt Nabby. Her cheeks were very pink, but she spoke with a careful calm. ‘You don’t want to say nothin’ you ’ll be sorry for.’

‘I am of good character,’ said Lyddy. She held her head up and looked at Sarah with anger in her glance and beating through her voice. ‘There can’t nobody make me feel I ain’t. I s’pose if anybody could, you could, Sarah Bell, because you’d rake and scrape till you found somethin’ against me, if there was anything. But I’m as good a woman as you are, and I’m as good as Nancy. I ain’t so good as Aunt Nabby is, because there never’s anybody as good as she is, ’cept mother. She was.’

Sarah pressed her lips together until they made a line of white.

‘Who is Miss Peterson?’ she said, ‘when it comes to that?’

‘Miss Peterson is the lady that come into the hospital after the baby was born,’ said Lyddy passionately. ‘And the baby died, and John was dead, and they made her tell me. And she did. And I guess if anybody else had told me I’d died, too. But she just made me live.’

‘That’s right,’ said Aunt Nabby. She put up a thin forefinger and poked a tear away from under each glass of her spectacles. What her gentle approval was meant to touch, whether it was right that Miss Peterson should tell Lyddy or right that Lyddy should not die, no one could say. Nor could Aunt Nabby have said. She was only conscious of a heartache over the woe of her world.

Sarah, needle poised in air, was looking at her.

‘There, mother,’ said she, ‘what’d I tell you? That’s exactly it. Lyddy just as soon speak of that man as eat, and it’s a shame and disgrace.’

Lyddy was sobbing now and talking wildly in between.

‘I don’t know why I can’t speak of John Wilde right here ’mongst my own folks,’ she said. ‘He was a good man, Sarah Bell. He was as good as your own husband, and better, because he spent his life tryin’ to make things right for the down-trodden and poor. And he’d have been alive this day if he had n’t been tryin’ to save a strikebreaker and got the brick himself.’

Sarah was quivering now to the tips of her capable fingers.

‘That’s what you believe in, is it?’ she inquired. ‘You believe in a man that goes round ruinin’ young girls and breakin’ up the home.’

Lyddy started to her feet.

‘Don’t you say such a thing as that, Sarah Bell!’ she cried with passion. ‘He stood by what he believed, and I stood by it with him, and Miss Peterson says ’t was wrong, and maybe I shall come to think so, and maybe John would if he’d lived; but he did n’t live, and now I’ve got nothin’ but his darlin’ memory, and you let it be, Sarah Bell; you let it be.’

She was sobbing bitterly, her poor uncovered face quite blurred with tears. Aunt Nabby came and laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘There, dear heart,’ she said. ‘There! there! We ’re goin’ to have Indian puddin’ for dinner, everything you like.’

Lyddy wiped her face off recklessly with a sweep of the hand.

‘ I don’t want any dinner, Aunt Nabby,’ said she. ‘I ain’t goin’ to stay.’

‘You ain’t goin’ to stay?’ All three women exclaimed it in different keys.

‘No,’ said Lyddy. ‘That’s what I got out and went through the cross-road for, to tell the Peltons I wanted they should carry me back to the twelve o’clock train. I did want to walk over the ground John and I used to walk together; but that wa’n’t all. When I found Sarah was here, and when I see she was goin’ to take it out of me every word she spoke, I says to myself, “I’ll get away quick as I can.” ’

‘Sarah ain’t goin’ to take it out of you,’ said Aunt Nabby. She had steadied her voice and her glance to the subduing of them both, as if it were a childish quarrel and demanded the reserves of motherly sagacity. ‘Sarah’s goin’ to be a good girl an’ so be you, too. Mother’s ashamed o’ you, Sarah. I never knew you to act quite so bad as you’ve acted this day.’

Sarah had flushed a deep sullen red. She was rolling up her work.

’I guess,’ said she, ‘if I’ve made so much trouble, I might as well go home and let you all eat your Indian puddin’ in peace.’

‘O Sarah!’ said Nancy.

‘You need n’t trouble yourself,’ said Lyddy, wiping her blurred face again. ‘In an hour and a half I shall be gone. I guess’t won’t hurt anybody to live in the same house with me till then.’

‘Sarah!’ said Aunt Nabby. She spoke with a dignity none of her children had ever been able to withstand. ‘I want you should run over to Mis’ Lamson’s an’ see if you can borrer me a cup o’ cream. I ain’t got hardly enough for dinner. You put my plaid shawl over your head an’ clip it right along. You take this cup.’

Sarah hesitated for a moment. Then she put the shawl about her without a word, and took the cup and went out of the kitchen door and down the path. Sarah needed intervals for thinking things over. Aunt Nabby had been used to giving them to her ever since she was a little girl and had had tantrums.

‘Now,’ said Aunt Nabby, ‘le’s pull out the chists an’ git at ’em. Nancy, you take hold.’

Nancy and Lyddy pulled out the two hair trunks, and Lyddy knelt before the first and opened it. She had done crying now, but her face was deeply sad in a way that touched Nancy to the soul. Nancy was very fond of Lyddy. It had meant enduring grief to her to see her little playmate, whose visits were unbroken pleasure, turn into a sad woman, a victim of disgrace. Lyddy was lifting the garments before her, in a sorrowful tenderness and then, in an indeterminate way, laying them down again. At last she leaned back and looked at Aunt Nabby, pottering about the kitchen under a pretence of work, to leave her free for the sadness of her task.

‘Aunt Nabby,’ said she, ‘I could n’t any more tell what to do with mother’s clo’es—I just can’t do it. You could n’t make ’em over for you and Nancy, could you?’

‘Mebbe I could,’said Aunt Nabby, encouragingly. She knew everything was too short and too small, but that was neither here nor there when Lyddy’s feelings were concerned. ‘You could let me go over ’em when you ’re gone, if you felt to, an’ I’d do what I thought was best.’

Lyddy shut the chest.

‘That’s it,’ said she. ‘You see to it. You’re always seein’ to things, Aunt Nabby, when our courage gives out. I guess we just lay down on you.’

Then she opened the other chest. Here were a few pictures and the precious among the books. The rest had gone to Uncle Dill, who was a minister.

‘It’s no use for me to pretend I can pick over mother’s things and say which shall be used and which be thrown away,’ said Lyddy. ‘I’ve got as much courage as most folks, but when it comes to that — why, seems if I was throwin’ away mother when I spec’late over her things.’

Nancy looked at her a moment where she sat, slight and pale in her black dress, taking up the books with fumbling hands. Nancy, as she told Aunt Nabby afterward, could have cried, and out of a quick impulse to seem to help, she dropped on the floor at Lyddy’s side, and began to open books.

‘ Were n’t you cunnin’ to save these, Aunt Nabby?’ Lyddy said. ‘Here’s my reader, and here’s my spellin’ book. Can’t I just see myself standin’ up there in the middle o’ the class with my plaid dress on and spellin’ “separate”? Well, I guess I can.’

‘I kinder thought you’d like your school-books,’ said Aunt Nabby primly. She was beginning to be happy. From time to time, in the midst of her tasks, she made an errand to the window and stood there for a moment turning about the shining ring. ‘ I did n’t s’pose you’d want to take the school-books with ye, but I thought mebbe you’d kind o’ like to look ’em over.’

‘No,’ said Lyddy, ‘I could n’t take ’em with me, but I’m glad I know where they be. You’ll keep ’em, won’t you? even if I don’t ever have a roof to cover me, so’t I could take ’em away.’

‘Law, yes,’ said Aunt Nabby. ‘I’ll shove ’em right in under the eaves an’ they can stay as long as I do, an’ long’s Nancy does, I guess. The old Bible’s in there som’er’s.’

Lyddy had her hand on it. She was dragging it out from underneath.

‘If I wa’n’t a happy girl when I could sit down Sunday afternoon and turn over the pictures,’ said she, ‘then I guess there never was one.’

She had it in her lap now, and Nancy’s head was close to hers. First there was the Madonna of the Chair.

‘I always thought that baby was the cunnin’est,’ said Lyddy.

Two tears ran down her cheeks and splashed the page. She looked up quickly, not minding the tears. They were always coming now.

‘Aunt Nabby,’ said she, ‘there’s somethin’ I’d like to do. Now I’ve thought of it I want to do it so’t seems if I could n’t wait a minute.’

‘Well,’ said Aunt Nabby, ‘ if it’s anything ’t ’ll give you pleasure, you do it. You ain’t had none too much pleasure in this world, so fur.’

Lyddy was drawing uneven breath, and now she put her hand to her lips, as if for a moment she must keep in the daring words.

‘But I would n’t do it unless you owned ’t was right,’ she said then, with unconscious passion in her voice. ‘Only, now I’ve thought of it, seems if I’d got to do it.’

Aunt Nabby’s hand, the wedding ring on it, was on Lyddy’s shoulder. Aunt Nabby, as she spoke, could not help looking at the ring. It made her feel so soft and young and pitiful toward everything; and yet Aunt Nabby had not needed reminders to be pitiful.

‘You tell what ’t is, dear,’ said she. ‘If I can get it for ye, I will. Or so’d Nancy, far as that goes. You tell.’

‘It’s this,’ said Lyddy. She moistened her dry lips. ‘Aunt Nabby, we’re all down here in the Bible, when we’re born and—marriages, and deaths.’

‘Yes,’ said Aunt Nabby, ‘I s’pose so. I’ve kep’ our records pretty careful an I s’pose your mother did. I don’t know’s ever I looked over hers.’

‘Oh, they’re all there,’ said Lyddy, ‘mother’s marriage, and my birth, and your marriage — oh, yes, they’re all there. I can see just how they look on the page. Mother was so afraid she would n’t write ’em nice she used to rule the lines with a pin. Aunt Nabby, my baby’ — She stopped and her hot eyes were on Aunt Nabby’s face.

‘Yes, dear heart,’ said Aunt Nabby, as if she were putting a child to sleep. ‘There! there!’

‘My baby ain’t got any place in this world. And you’ll say he’s dead and so he don’t need any.’

‘No, no,’ said Aunt Nabby hotly. ‘I guess I should n’t say such a thing as that.’

‘Well, some would. But I named him. I named him John Wilde. And, Aunt Nabby, this is what I want. I want to put his name down here in the Bible with all the rest.’

Her voice had sunk, and even although it was only Aunt Nabby, she looked at her in terror. But Aunt Nabby stayed not an instant.

‘Set right still,5 said she. ‘I’ll bring the pen an’ ink an’ put ’em on a chair.5

Lyddy gave a little cry of happiness. She turned the leaves to the middle of the book, and Nancy’s head was close to hers.

‘Here ’t is,5 said she. ‘Here’s mother. Here’s Charlie that died. Here’s me. Here’s you, Nancy. Why, mercy sakes, what’s this?’

‘I can’t hardly read it,’ said Nancy. ‘Seems if your mother must have wrote it after she had her shock.5

‘What is 5t?’ said Aunt Nabby. She was waiting with the pen and ink.

‘Why,5 said Lyddy, in a low tone of wonderment. ‘ “Sarah adopted 1870.” Aunt Nabby, what’s that mean?5

Aunt Nabby carried the pen and ink to the window-sill and put them down with care. Then she seated herself by the table and began softly drumming on it, and mechanically she watched the shining of her ring.

‘Aunt Nabby,5 said Lyddy again, ‘what’d mother mean by writing such a thing as that? What’d she mean?’

Nancy came to her feet and went over to stand by Aunt Nabby’s chair. She saw how pale her mother was, and it troubled her.

‘Perhaps she did n’t mean anything,5 said Nancy. ‘You know your mother wa’n’t quite herself them last days.5

‘No,5 said Aunt Nabby, in a tired voice. ‘Your mother wa’n’t herself. That’s why she passed over what we vowed we never’d speak about. I guess her mind kinder went back into the past, an’ dwelt on it.’

‘But that was the year she was out west with you,5 said Lyddy. ‘Why, 5t was before I was born.5

‘Yes,’ said Aunt Nabby, in a dull way, ‘’t was the year before you’re born.5

‘And ’t was the year I was born, mother,’ said Nancy, joining the train of reason. ‘What’d she mean by it, mother, writin’ down a thing like that ?5

’I guess you better not try to spec5late on’t,5 said Aunt Nabby. ‘Makes me kinder faint.5

‘Why,5 said Nancy suddenly, in a loud voice, ‘Sarah ain’t my sister. You adopted her.5

‘Why, no,5 said Lyddy, in a tone of certainty, ‘of course Sarah ain’t your sister. Anybody5d know that, anybody that knew Aunt Nabby. Why, Aunt Nabby, course she ain’t your daughter.5

Aunt Nabby gave a sigh.

‘Oh, my!5 said she. ‘ Poor Sarah!5

Lyddy had an answer for that. She tore out the leaf with a quick passion and rent it in four pieces.

‘Here, Nancy,5 said she, ‘you do the rest.5

And Nancy took the pieces and thrust them into the kitchen stove and set the cover noisily.

‘There, mother,5 said she, ‘Sarah’s just as well off as she was before. Do you s’pose we’d tell? Why, I would n’t even tell Edward, not if I was to be skinned for it.5

Aunt Nabby still sat there regarding her wedding ring.

‘Aunt Ellen knew it,5 she said to Nancy. ‘ She an’ your father. They ’ re the only ones.5

‘Who was she, mother?’ Nancy asked. It was in a low tone as if, after all, she were a little frightened.

‘Why,’ said Aunt Nabby, ‘she was a poor little waif an’ stray. Her mother was a kind of a gay Biddy amongst the miners, an’ they left the little creatur’ round on doorsteps. An’ when she come to me, I took her in.5

‘ ’Course you did,’ said Nancy. ‘My! I guess if Sarah knew that she’d lay right down and die.’

‘Well, she never’ll know it from us,’ said Lyddy. She shut the book and put it soberly back among the rest.

‘Here,’ said Aunt Nabby, ‘you forgot to write your line. Here’s the ink.’

But Lyddy was closing down the lid.

‘I guess I won’t do it,’ she said.

‘Won’t do it?’ said Nancy. ‘Why won’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lyddy. ‘I don’t seem to want to. Nothin’ seems so big as it did, and nothin’ seems so little, come to that.’

Sarah was opening the kitchen door. The plaid shawl hung from her shoulders, for she was never really cold, and in her hand was the cup of cream.

‘Well, Lyddy,’ said she, ‘I’ve been over to Pelton’s and told ’em you would n’t go till the three. I can harness up myself, and I’ll be off, if you’re goin’ to get rid o’ me.’

Lyddy laughed a little, as if she did it to show how kind she felt.

‘I’ll stay and be glad to,’ she said, ‘if you’ll stay, too. I guess three womenfolks don’t need to wrangle and fall out.’

‘You set the table, Sarah,’ said Aunt Nabby. ‘Lyddy, why don’t you an’ Nancy go out an’ give the colt a pail o’ water an’ then a mou’ful o’ hay. You used to admire to play together in the barn.’

After they had gone, arms about each other’s waists like children, Aunt Nabby asked Sarah whether she’d like sugar barberry or the other, and gradually she drew her into talk about domestic things. Sarah went soberly about, working with her swift precision. She looked a shade paler and her voice was low. Aunt Nabby knew this mood in her. After Sarah had had a tantrum she usually went away and had a crying fit, and for a week after she spoke in a softer key.

Then Nancy and Lyddy came back from the barn, and the three talked together about the happenings of the house and farm, and Sarah was the gentlest of them all.

When young Pelton came for Lyddy to take her to the three o’clock, Aunt Nabby’s heart swelled within her, and overflowed, Lyddy looked to her so unfriended and so small. Lyddy had reached up to kiss Sarah good-bye and she had put her arms about Nancy and laid her head for a minute on Aunt Nabby’s shoulder. Then she was in the sleigh, white, Aunt Nabby said afterward, as the drifted snow. Young Pelton had gone to the horse’s head to put down the check for Footloose Hill, and then Aunt Nabby said something to Nancy, and Nancy said, ‘yes,’ as well as she could for tears.

‘Truly?’ said Aunt Nabby, and Nancy told her ‘yes’ again, and Aunt Nabby ran out again to the sleigh.

‘Here, Lyddy,’ said she, ‘you take your glove off. No, not that hand. T’other. You put this on your finger an’ you wear it, an’ it’ll make you think o’ your mother an’ Nancy an’ me — an’ Sarah — yes, you think o’ Sarah, too. An’ the baby,’ she whispered, for young Pelton had the check looped up, ‘an’ them that’s dead an’ loved ye.’

And then Lyddy, at the touch on her finger, gave a little crying breath, but there was light in her eyes, and color in her cheeks.

‘O Aunt Nabby,’ said she, ‘did you get this for me?’

But young Pelton had stepped in and the horse threw up his head and started bravely. And Aunt Nabby looked down at her bare finger a little ruefully and then at Nancy, and through their tears they laughed.

‘Anyhow, I’ve had all day to wear it,’ said Aunt Nabby. ‘It seems wonderful — a weddin’ ring.’