Country Neighbors

								

tone. All his emotion had this way of taking little by-paths, as if he
skirted courtship without often finding the courage to enter boldly in.
It was delightful to her, but at this moment she could not even listen.
She was too busy with her own familiar quest. Now she spoke timidly, yet
with a hidden purpose.
"I think pictures of folks are a good deal of a comfort, don't
you--after death?"
Eben made no answer for a moment. He still gazed reflectively outward,
but whether it was into the future or his hidden past she could not
tell.
"It's queer about dyin'," he said at last.
She answered him tumultuously:--
"What is?"
"Why--" then he paused, as if to set his thought in order. "I can't tell
jest what I mean. Only folks can be here to-day an' there to-morrer. An'
they can be all of a bloom of health, or handsome as a pictur'--an' lo
ye! they're changed!"
A cold certainty settled upon her heart. The first wife had, then, been
handsome. Lydia did not know whether acquired knowledge was a boon or
not. Eben had risen, and was standing with his hands in his pockets,
still looking into space. It seemed to her that he was miles away.
"An' I dunno which is the worst," he was saying, "to have 'em come down
with a long sickness, or drop off sudden. I do, too. It's worse to see
'em suffer. But when they give right up afore your face an' eyes--"
He stopped, and Lydia thought he shuddered. Again she knew. The first
wife had died suddenly, and the memory of the shock was too keen upon
him to admit of speech. But he shook off reflection as if it had been
the dust of the hour. Now he turned to her, and the sweet recognition
of his glance was warming her anew. "Don't you go an' play me any such
trick," he said, with the whimsical creases deepening in his cheeks.
Yet she thought his eyes were wet.
"What?"
"Dyin'."
A new tenderness was born in her at the moment, seeing what he had
endured.
"No," she wanted to say, "I hope you won't have to go through that
twice." But she only shook her head brightly at him. "Come," said she,
"it's time to harness up."
"I'll drive down through that cross-road," said Eben, "an' then I've
finished up all them little byways. Byme-by, when we feel like settin'
out for good, we can pike right along the old Boston road, an' that'll
take us to aunt Phebe's, an' so on home. But we won't start out till
we're good an' ready. I guess you got kinder tired afore."
"I'm ready now," said Lydia. The color was in her cheeks. She felt
dauntless. At once, born somehow from this sober talk, she felt a
melting championship of him, as if life had hurt him too keenly and she
was there to make it up to him. Henceforth she meant to be first and
second wife in one.
"Hooray!" called Eben. He tossed up his hat; and the tavern-keeper's
wife, making pies by the kitchen window, smiled at him and shook her
rolling-pin. "Then we'll start off to-morrer, bright an' early. I don't