Country Neighbors Part 28

Gardener Jim threw down the axe at last and wiped his forehead.

"Where you want them boards piled?" he asked Eliza briefly.

"Down there by the wood-shed." Her voice trembled. "They'll make good kindlin'."

Over the s.p.a.ce where two or three sound posts were standing, she spoke to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to break the web of years.

"You better have some o' them boards."

"Mebbe I had," said Sophy.

"Here, Wilfred," called Gardener Jim. "You pile them boards an' I'll see if I can't loosen up the dirt a mite round this old phlox. Anybody must be a 'tarnal fool to build up a high board-fence an' cut off the sun from things when they're tryin' to grow."

Sophy looked timidly at her sister.

"I s'pose 'tis foolish to try to have anything if you don't take care on 't," she said.

Eliza cleared her throat and answered with the same irrelevance:--

"He's fixed up the pinies real nice. See 'f you remember which the white one was."

Sophy stepped over the dividing line, and the two sisters walked away to the peony settlement. Gardener Jim touched Wilfred on the arm.

"You go along," said he. "I'll finish here. You 'tend to Annie's gardin.

I hove a trowel over the fence there this mornin'. You go an' git up some o' them weeds."

Wilfred nodded in unquestioning compliance. As he hesitated then for a moment, watching the sisters, and wondering what they were talking about, Eliza raised her hand and brushed a leaf from Sophy's shoulder.

Then they went on talking, but apparently of the garden, for they pointed here and there in a fervor of discovery. Wilfred turned with a rush and went off to Annie Darling's.

He found the trowel under the fence, as Gardener Jim had prophesied, and he worked all day, with a brief nooning at home. The garden was full of voices. Here was a plant he had driven ten miles to get for her; here were the mint and balm she loved. It seemed to him, as the hours went by, that he was talking with her and telling her many things--confessions, some of them, and pleas for her continued kindliness. When he had finished, all but carrying away his pile of weeds, he heard a voice at the gate. It was Lily, under a bright parasol, her face repeating its bloom.

"Well, I never!" she called. "You goin' to turn gardener, same as your uncle did?"

Wilfred took off his hat, to feel the air, and went forward toward her.

He was not embarra.s.sed. She seemed to him quite a different person from what she had before.

"I've just got it done," said he, with a perfect simplicity. "Don't it look nice?"

Lily had flushed, and, he thought with surprise, she looked almost angry. But she laughed with the same gay note.

"Been doin' it for Annie Darling?" she asked. "For darling Annie?"

"Yes," said Wilfred, "I've been doin' it for Annie."

"Mercy! how hot it is!" said Lily, "Seems if there wasn't a breath of air anywhere. I must get home and see if I can find me a fan."

She was rustling away, but Wilfred did not look after her. He was too busy.

When the weeds had all been carried away, he stood looking at the orderly garden with something like love for it in his heart. And then the gate clicked and Annie came in and up the path. There was a strange, wistful radiance in her face, as if she had chanced upon an undreamed-of joy. It was like the home-coming of a bride. Wilfred strode over the beds and put his arms about her.

"O Annie!" he said. "I'm glad you've come!"

At six o'clock they were still in the garden, talking, though she had opened the house, and the smoke was coming out of the chimney from the fire boiling the water for their tea. Gardener Jim, going home from his work, came up to the fence and leaned on it, eying the garden critically.

"Well, Wilfred," said he, "you've done a good day's work."

The youth and maid came forward. His arm was about her waist and her cheeks were pink.

"How'd you leave the twins?" asked Wilfred.

Gardener Jim looked off into the road vista, and shook all over, mirthlessly.

"I heerd 'em say they were goin' to have flapjacks for supper," said he gravely, "an' fry 'em in Sophy's part." His eyes came back to Annie and studied her for a moment. Then he spoke abruptly. "I'm goin' to give you suthin', Annie--that set o' flowered chiny. It's all there is left in the house that's wuth anything. 'Twas my mother's, an' her mother's afore her, an' there ain't a piece missin'. When you git ready for it, Wilfred here he'll come round an' pack it up."

THE SILVER TEA-SET

Ann Barstow stood at the kitchen table, rubbing her silver tea-set. The house was poor and old, but very clean, and Ann--a thin little eager body--seemed to fit it perfectly. Her strong hands moved back and forth as if she were used to work and loved it for its own sake; but there were other things she loved, and the days that summer seemed to her fuller of life and motion than they had been since she was young. She had lived alone in this little clearing, backed by pine woods, for over thirty years, and every sound of sighing or falling branch was familiar to her, with every resinous tang. Ann thought there was no place on earth so fitted for a happy life as a curving cross-road where people seldom came; but her content increased this summer when young Jerry Hamlin began building a large house across the road, a few rods below her gate, to live there with his wife. When Ann heard the news, she was vaguely agitated by it. For a time it seemed as if something were about to invade her calm. But as the house went up, she began to find she liked the tapping of hammers and the sound of voices never addressed to her. When Jerry and his wife came to look at things, as they did nearly every day, and threw her a hearty word or a smile, she liked them, too, and it came to her that her old age was to be the brighter for company.

To-day the house was still and empty; she missed the workmen, and polished the harder, to take off her mind. A heavy step was at the door.

She knew at once who it was: Mrs. John C. Briggs, walking slowly because her "heft" was great, and blooming with good-will all over her large face, framed in its thin blond hair.

"Come in," called Ann. "Set right down. I won't leave off my work. I'm all over this 'ere polis.h.i.+n' stuff."

Mrs. John C. sank into a seat, and devoted the first few moments to breathing.

"Well," said she, "I heard the workmen was off to-day; so I thought I'd poke in an' see the new house."

"Yes," said Ann, "they had to wait for mortar. It's goin' to be a nice pretty place, ain't it?"

"Complete. Well, I should think you'd be rejoiced to have neighbors, all alone as you be."

Ann smiled.

"I never see a lonesome minute," she said. "There's everything goin' on round in these woods. The birds an' flyin' things are jest as busy as the hand o' man, if ye know how to ketch 'em at it. Still, I guess I've got to the time o' life when I shall kinder enjoy neighbors."

"Ain't you never afraid?"

"I guess there's nothin' round here that's wuss'n myself," returned Ann, proffering the ancient witticism with a jocose certainty of its worth.

"I ain't very darin', neither. Not much like father, I ain't, nor what brother Will used to be. Either o' them'd face Old Nick an' give him as good as he sent."

"Well, all I can say is, folks can't be too near for me. What would you do if you should be sick in the night?"

"I dunno," said Ann gayly. "Set down an' suck my claws, I guess, an'

wait till daylight. I can't think o' nothin' else." She had finished her polis.h.i.+ng and set back the silver, to eye it with a critical and delighted gaze. Then she washed her hands at the sink, and brought out a fine white napkin from the high-boy, and spread it on a little table between the windows. "I dunno but I'm dretful childish," she said, "but arter I've got it all rubbed up, I keep it here in sight, a day or two, it ketches the sun so. Then I set it away in the best-room cluzzet."