Country Neighbors Part 44

After he had risen and gone off rather helplessly to seek his t'other trousers, Amarita did glance after him with a tentative movement from her chair. It almost seemed as if she repented and meant to go on the quest herself. Old Mis' Meade, translating this, held her breath and waited; but Amarita only sighed and took a needleful of thread. Then Elihu returned with the rule and a stubby pencil, and all the evening long he drew lines and held the paper at arm's length and frowned at what he saw. Old Mis' Meade was in the habit of going to bed before the others, and to-night she paused, candle in hand, to interrogate him.

"Elihu!"

"What say?" her son returned. He was again regarding the rectangular patterns on his page, in some dissatisfaction and yet with pleasure, too. It was the look of one who makes.

"What under the sun you doin' of?" asked the old lady. "What you rulin'

off? Makes me as nervous as a witch."

Elihu laid down his paper from that removed survey and leaned back in his chair. It seemed to add some richness to his task to have it noticed.

"Well," said he, "there's goin' to be a town meetin' next Wednesday, to take a vote on that money Judge Green left for the Old Folks' Home."

"Yes, yes," said his mother. "I know that. Come, hurry up. This candle's in a draught."

"Well," said Elihu, "we've talked it over, more or less, most on us, and we've come to the conclusion it's only a bill o' cost to go hirin' city architects to plan out the job. All we want's a good square house, and I thought I'd draw out a plan o' one and submit it to the meetin'."

"O Elihu!" said Amarita, in a tone of generous awe. "You think you could?"

"Think?" said Elihu. "No, I don't think. I know it. Mebbe I couldn't draw out a house with cubelows and piazzas and jogs and the like o'

that, but that ain't what we've got in mind. It's a good old-fas.h.i.+oned house, and I s'pose any man of us could do it, only n.o.body's got the nerve to try. So I took it into my head to be the one."

"Well," said his mother skeptically, "mebbe you can an' mebbe you can't.

Good-night, all."

But Amarita leaned forward across the table, her eager eyes upon the paper. She had forgotten her resentment. It was happiness to her to see Elihu doing what he liked and succeeding in it.

"O Elihu," said she, "show it to me, won't you? Tell me what the rooms are."

But he was rolling up his work.

"No," he said; "wait till I get a little further along. Then I will. I'm going to the street and buy me a sheet or two o' cardboard to-morrer."

But they talked cozily about it for a half-hour, and when Elihu rose to wind the clock they were both convinced that he was a great man indeed.

All that week Elihu worked over his plan, and when he had at last set it accurately down on the cover of a bandbox, as a preliminary to drafting it out fair and large, he showed it to his wife. They had put their heads together over it at the table, when Elihu caught sight of Simeon Eldridge bringing him a cord of pine limbs.

"You wait a minute," he adjured Amarita. "I got to help him unload. I'll show it to you when I come in."

But Amarita pored over it by herself, and old Mis' Meade, at the window, knit and watched for the pa.s.sing. It was a bright day, and it seemed reasonable that at least two wagons might go by.

"Don't you want I should bring it over there," said Amarita, at length, "and let you look at it?"

"Law, no!" old Mis' Meade responded, with the ruthlessness of one whose mind is not on futures. "I guess I can wait till they've begun to hew out their underpinnin'."

"Ain't it remarkable he can do a thing like that?"

"He ain't done it yet," said the old lady sagely. "I'll b'lieve it when I'm called to the raisin'."

Amarita flushed.

"I don't see what does make you cry him down so," she declared, with a rare resentment. "Seems if you didn't want to allow he can do the least thing out o' the common."

"Well," said the old lady, "I dunno 's he can. There, Amarita!" She threw caution from her as far as it would fly. "I guess I set by Elihu enough, an' more too, but it does go ag'inst the grain to see you makin'

out he's the greatest man that ever stepped. 'Twon't be long before ye can't live with him. Can't either of us!"

Amarita was silent, staring straight at the old lady, who glanced up presently and blinked at her.

"You goin' to let them books set there in the front entry?" she inquired, as if her point of attack had s.h.i.+fted.

"Why, yes, I s'pose so," faltered Amarita.

"Don't ye want to peek into 'em an' see what they be?"

"Why, yes; but I don't want to do anything to get Elihu into trouble about 'em. I s'pose I was kinder foolish to believe what the man said."

"Foolis.h.!.+" retorted the old lady, with vigor. "Course you was foolish.

Everybody's foolish one time out o' three. That's about the only thing there's no patent on."

"Well, I s'pose folks do get into trouble doin' things wrong-end-to,"

said Amarita.

She felt as if she were defending Elihu in his censors.h.i.+p.

"Why, yes! n.o.body says they don't. Let 'em git in an' let 'em git out ag'in. It ain't doin' foolish things or not doin' 'em I complain of.

It's Elihu's settin' himself up to be the only human creatur' that never stepped inside of a gla.s.s house. Law! if he did but know it, he's got a ninety-nine-year lease o' one, an' if he could git it into his head how plain I can glimpse him through the walls, a surpriseder man you never'd see. Elihu's as good a boy as ever stepped; but if he could be took down a peg--an' I shouldn't care if 'twas before the whole towns.h.i.+p, too--he'd be worth more by half than he is to-day. Law! you'd ought to seen him a hundred years ago or more, arter I gi'n him a good spankin'. b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth."

"Oh, don't! He's comin'," Amarita begged her.

But he was not coming, and for an hour Amarita dwelt upon the plans. Her eyes grew bright and her cheeks flushed. Once she pushed her pretty hair back from her forehead and looked up at the old lady, as if she had impulsive things to say. But she did not speak, and turning back to the plans, she went absorbedly over them again. Old Mis' Meade watched her scornfully, and yet tenderly, too. If ever a woman was a fool over a man, she reasoned, Amarita was that fool; but in her heart she would not have had it otherwise.

Now that the plans were virtually finished, Elihu sat over them at an hour's stretch, testing and measuring in an extreme of accuracy.

Amarita watched him, with that bright antic.i.p.ation in her face; and old Mis' Meade, her eyes intermittently upon them, thought the long thoughts of age, half scornful, half sympathizing, and wondered again how any woman could be so lost in admiration over a man.

At last it was the day appointed for town meeting, and Elihu was at his task for the last time, making a fair copy for his townsmen's eyes. It was about four in the afternoon, and the smell of hot apple-sauce was in the air. Amarita meant to have supper early, so that she could give her mind untrammeled to getting her husband into his bosomed s.h.i.+rt and starting him on his quest. But as she moved back and forth at her tasks she watched him, and her eyes glittered. Old Mis' Meade noted the excitement of her air and the double tinge of color in her cheeks.

"What's the matter, Rita?" she asked kindly, when Amarita stood for a moment by the table between the front windows, frowning with the care she was giving to sewing a b.u.t.ton on a wristband. "Ain't you kinder feverish?"

Amarita started--almost, it might have been, with some inner consciousness not to be given away.

"Oh no," said she. "I ain't feverish, mother Meade. Maybe I'm kinder flurried, Elihu's goin' out and all."

"Goin' to take the womenfolks along with ye, Elihu?" called the old lady, a satirical note beating into her voice.

Elihu looked up absently from his paper.

"Why," said he, with a leniency slightly tinctured by the impatience responsive to a foolish question, "it's jest a town meetin', same as any other. We're goin' to take action on the Old Folks' Home."

"Take action?" repeated old Mis' Meade. "Oh, that's it, is it? Well, Rita 'n' I'll stay to home an' take action on the 'Master Minds o'

History.' This is as good a night as any. Mebbe there's a few womenfolks in there--enough for pepper 'n' salt--if they ain't bound for town meetin'."