"Oh, you can't, you can't," groaned Miss Saidie, nervously mopping out the inside of a cup."For heaven's sake, don't raise another cloud of dust jest as we're beginning to see clear again.""Now don't tell me I can't when I must," responded Maria, pushing away her plate and rising from the table; "there's no such word as 'can't' when one has to, you know.I'll be back in two hours at the most, and oh! with so much to tell you!"After tying on her hat in the hall, she looked in again to lighten Miss Saidie's foreboding by a tempting bait of news; but when she had descended the steps and walked slowly along the drive under the oaks, the assumed brightness of her look faded as rapidly as the morning sunshine on the clay road before her.It was almost with dismay that she found herself covering the ground between the Hall and Will's home and saw the shaded lane stretching to the little farm adjoining Sol Peterkin's.
As she passed the store, Mrs.Spade, who was selling white china buttons to Eliza Field, leaned over the counter and stared in amazement through the open window.
"Bless my soul an' body, if thar ain't old Fletcher's granddaughter come back!" she exclaimed--"holdin' her head as high as ever, jest as if her husband hadn't beat her black an'
blue.Well, well, times have slid down hill sence I was a gal, an' the women of to-day ain't got the modesty they used to be born with.Why, I remember the time when old Mrs.Beale in the next county used to go to bed for shame, with a mustard plaster, every time her husband took a drop too much, which he did every blessed Saturday that he lived.It tided him over the Sabbath mighty well, he used to say, for he never could abide the sermons of Mr.Grant."Eliza dropped the buttons she had picked up and turned, craning her neck in the direction of Maria's vanishing figure.
"What on earth has she gone down Sol Peterkin's lane for?" she inquired suspiciously.
"The Lord knows; if it's to visit her brother, I may say it's a long ways mo'n I'd do.""She was always a queer gal even befo' her marriage--so strange an' far-away lookin' that I declar' it used to scare me half to death to meet her all alone at dusk.I never could help feelin'
that she could bewitch a body, if she wanted to, with those solemn black eyes.""She ain't bewitched me," returned Mrs.Spade decisively "an'
what's mo', she's had too many misfortune come to her to make me believe she ain't done somethin' to deserve 'em.Thar's mighty few folks gets worse than they deserve in this world, an' when you see a whole flock of troubles settle on a person's head you may rest right sartain thar's a long score of misbehaviours up agin 'em.Yes, ma'am; when I hear of a big misfortune happenin'
to anybody that I know, the first question that pops into my head is: 'I wonder if they've broke the sixth this time or jest the common seventh?' The best rule to follow, accordin' to my way of thinkin', is to make up yo' mind right firm that no matter what evil falls upon a person it ain't nearly so bad as the good Lord ought to have made it.""That's a real pious way of lookin' at things, I reckon," sighed Eliza deferentially, as she fished five cents from the deep pocket of her purple calico and slapped it down upon the counter;"but we ain't all such good church-goers as you, the mo's the pity.""Oh, I'm moral, an' I make no secret of it, "replied Mrs.Spade.
"It's writ plain all over me, an' it has been ever sence the day that I was born.'That's as moral lookin' a baby as ever I saw,'
was what Doctor Pierson said to ma when I wan't mo'n two hours old.It was so then, an' it's been so ever sence.'Virtue may not take the place of beaux,' my po' ma used to say, 'but it will ease her along mighty well without 'em'--Yes, the buttons are five cents.To be sure, I'll watch out and let you hear if she comes this way again."Maria, meanwhile, happily unconscious of the judgment of her neighbours, walked thoughtfully along the lane until she came in sight of the small tumbled-down cottage which had been Fletcher's wedding gift to his grandson.A man in blue jean clothes was ploughing the field on the left of the road, and it was only when something vaguely familiar in his dejected attitude caused her to turn for a second glance that she realised, with a pang, that he was Will.
At her startled cry he looked up from the horses he was driving, and then, letting the ropes fall, came slowly toward her across the faint purple furrows.All the boyish jauntiness she remembered was gone from his appearance; his reversion to the family type had been complete, and it came to her with a shock that held her motionless that he stood to-day where her grandfather had stood fifty years before.
"Will!" she gasped, with an impulsive, motherly movement of her arms.Rejecting her caress with an impatient shrug, he stood kicking nervously at a clod of earth, his eyes wavering in a dispirited survey of her face.
"Well, it seems that we have both made a blamed mess of things,"he said at last.
Maria shook her head, smiling hopefully."Not too bad a mess to straighten out, dear," she answered."We must set to work at once and begin to mend matters.Ah, if you had only written me how things were!""What was the use?" asked Will doggedly."It was all grandpa--he turned out the devil himself, and there was no putting up with him.He'll live forever, too; that's the worst of it!""But you did anger him very much, Will--and you might so easily have waited.Surely, you were both young enough.""Oh, it wasn't all about Molly, you know, when it comes to that.
Long before I married he had made my life a burden to me.It all began with his insane jealousy of Christopher Blake--""Of Christopher Blake?" repeated Maria, and fell a step away from him.
