The Miller Of Old Church Part 16

"That would be a pity, wouldn't it? Do you ever think of me, I wonder, at the same time?" he inquired sentimentally.

"I can't tell because I don't know just what that time is, you see."

"Well, along after supper generally--particularly if ma has made buckwheat cakes an' I've eaten a hearty meal an' feel kind of cosy an'

comfortable when I set down by the fire an' there's nothin' special to do."

"But you see I don't like buckwheat cakes, and I've always something 'special' to do at that hour."

"Ah, you don't mean it, do you--about not liking buckwheat cakes? As for the rest, bein' a woman, I reckon you would have the was.h.i.+n' up to attend to just at that time. I don't like a woman that sets around idle after supper--an' I'm glad you're one to be brisk an' busy about the house, though I'm sorry you ain't over partial to buckwheat. May I inquire, if you don't object to tellin' me, what is yo' favourite food?"

"It's hard to say--I have so many--bread and jam, I believe."

"I hope you don't think I'm too pressin' on the subject, but ma has always said that there wasn't any better bond for matrimony than the same taste in food. Do you think she's right?"

"I shouldn't wonder. She's had experience anyway."

"Yes, that's jest what I tell her--she's had experience an' she ought to know. Pa and she never had a word durin' the thirty years of their marriage, an' she always said she ruled him not with the tongue, but with the fryin' pan. I don't reckon there's a better cook than ma in this part of the country, do you?"

"I'm quite sure there isn't. She has given up her life to it."

"To be sure she has--every minute of it, like the woman whose price is above rubies that Mr. Mullen is so fond of preachin' about." For a moment he considered the fact as though impressed anew by its importance. "I'm glad you feel that way, because ma has always stuck out that you had the makin' of a mighty fine cook in you."

"Has she? That was nice of her, wasn't it?"

"Well, she wouldn't have said so if she hadn't thought it. It ain't her way to say pleasant things when she can help it. You must judge her by her work not by her talk, pa used to say."

"She's the kind that doesn't mind taking trouble for you, I know that about her," replied Molly, gravely.

"You're right about that, an' you're the same way, I am sure. I've watched you pretty closely with your grandfather."

"Yes, I believe I am--with grandfather."

"'Twill be the same way when you marry, I was sayin' as much to ma only yesterday. 'She'd be jest as savin' an' thrifty as you,'--I mean, of course, if the right man got you to marry him,--but 'tis all the same in the end." Again he paused, cleared his throat, and swallowed convulsively, "I've sometimes felt that I might be the right man, Miss Molly," he said.

"O Mr. Halloween!"

"Why, I thought you knew I felt so from the way you looked at me."

"But I can't help the way I look, can I?"

"Well, I've told you now, so it ain't a secret. I've thought about askin' you for more than a year--ever since you smiled at me one Sunday in church while Mr. Mullen was preachin'."

"Did I? I've quite forgotten it!"

"I suppose you have, seein' you smile so frequent. But that put the idea in my head anyway an' I've cared a terrible lot about marryin' you ever since."

"But I'm not the kind of person, at all. I'm not saving, I'm not thrifty."

"I hope you're wrong--but even if you're not, well, I want you terrible hard just the same. You see I can always keep an eye on the expenses,"

he hastened to add, and made a desperate clutch at her hand.

The red worsted mitten came off in his grasp, and he stood eyeing it ruefully while he waited for her answer.

"I've determined never, never to marry," she replied.

His chest heaved. "I knew you felt that way about the other's but I thought somehow I was different," he rejoined.

"No, it's not the man, but marriage that I don't like," she responded, shaking her head. "It's all work an' no play wherever I've seen it."

"It's terrible for a woman to feel like that, an' goes against G.o.d an'

nature," he answered. "Have you ever tried prayin' over it?"

"No, I've never tried that, because you see, I don't really mind it very much. Please give me my glove now, here is Judy's cottage."

"But promise me first that you'll try prayin' over your state of mind, an' that I may go on hopin' that you will change it?"

Turning with her hand still outstretched for the glove, she glanced roguishly from his face to the shuttered window of the Hatch cottage.

"Oh, I don't mind your hoping," she answered, composing her expression to demureness, "if only you won't hope--very hard."

Then, leaving him overwhelmed by his emotions, she tripped up the narrow walk, bordered by stunted rose-bushes, to the crumbling porch of Solomon's house. At the door a bright new gig, with red wheels, caught her eye, and before the mischievous dimples had fled from her cheek, she ran into the arms of the Reverend Orlando Mullen.

Her confusion brought a beautiful colour into his cheeks, while, in a chivalrous effort to s.h.i.+eld her from further embarra.s.sment, he turned his eyes to the face of Judy Hatch, which was lifted at his side like the rapt countenance of one of the wan-featured, adoring saints of a Fra Angelico painting. No one--not even the nurse of his infancy--had ever imputed a fault either to his character or to his deportment; for he had come into the world endowed with an infallible instinct for the commonplace. In any profession he would have won success as a s.h.i.+ning light of mediocrity, since the ruling motive of his conduct was less the ambition to excel than the moral inability to be peculiar. His mind was small and solemn, and he had worn three straight and unyielding wrinkles across his forehead in his earnest endeavour to prevent people from acting, and especially from thinking, lightly. This sedulous devotion to the public morals kept him not only a trifle spare in figure, but lent an habitual manner of divine authority to his most trivial utterance.

His head, seen from the rear, was a little flat, but this, fortunately, did not show in the pulpit--where at the age of twenty-four his eloquence enraptured his congregation.

"I postponed my visit to Applegate until to-morrow," he said, when he had given her what he thought was sufficient time to recover her composure. "If you are returning shortly, perhaps I may have the pleasure of driving you in my gig. I have just come to inquire after Mrs. Hatch."

"It would be kind of you, for I am a little tired," responded Molly.

"I came to speak to Judy, and then I am to stop at the mill to borrow a pattern from Blossom Revercomb. Are you going that way, I wonder?"

"I shall make it my way," he replied gallantly, "as soon as you are ready. Don't hurry, I beg of you. It is gratifying to me to find that you have so soon taken my advice and devoted a portion of your days to visiting the sick and the afflicted."

With her back discreetly turned upon Judy, she looked up at him for a moment, and something in her eyes rendered unnecessary the words that fell slowly and softly from her lips.

"You give such good advice, Mr. Mullen."

A boyish eagerness showed in his face, breaking through the professional austerity of his manner.

"I hope you've advised Judy this morning," she added before he could answer.

"To the best of my ability," he replied gravely. "And now, as I have said before, there is no hurry, but if you are quite ready, I should suggest our starting."

"Just a word or two with Judy," she answered, and when the words were spoken in the doorway she laid her hand in the rector's and mounted, with his scrupulous a.s.sistance, over the red wheel to the s.h.i.+ning black seat of the gig, which smelt of leather and varnish. After he had taken his place beside her he tucked in the laprobe carefully at the corners, rearranged the position of his overcoat at her back, and suggested that she should put the bottle of cough syrup in the bottom of the vehicle.

Like all his attentions, this solicitude about the cough syrup had an air that was at once amorous and ministerial, a manner of implying, "Observe how I take possession of you always to your advantage."

"Are you quite comfortable?" he asked when they had rolled between the stunted rose-bushes into the turnpike.