Country Neighbors

								

her eyes, and when she opened them again, the sky had faded and the air
was chill.
"I guess you're gittin' tired again," said Eben tenderly. "Well, we'll
be to aunt Phebe's by eight, an' she'll put you straight to bed."
The tears had wet her cheeks. They were the first she had shown him, and
he looked at them with dismay. "Hullo!" he cried, "hullo!" It was actual
terror in his voice. "'Tain't so bad as that!"
Lydia straightened herself in the buggy and wiped away the tears with an
impatient hand.
"I guess 'twas the sunset," she said tremulously. "I never see such a
sky."
"That all?" Eben was much relieved. Then he touched up the horse, and
told him what a lot of oats were waiting in aunt Phebe's barn. "If
that's all," he said, giving his mind to Lydia again, "you'll have to
spend most o' your time in salt water. That's the kind o' sunsets we're
goin' to have every night arter we get home. The doctor's ordered 'em."
Lydia made herself laugh, and they talked no more until they drove up to
a prosperous white house on the outskirts of the first village, and aunt
Phebe came to meet them. It was all a joyous tumult that night, and
Lydia went to bed early, with a confused sense that aunt Phebe was very
kind and that she had gold-bowed glasses and shook the floor when she
walked, and that the supper was a product of expert cooking. Eben was
uproariously gay, in the degree of approaching home, and took aunt Phebe
about the waist to waltz with her, whereupon she cuffed him with a
futile hand, remarking:--
"Eben Jakes, I'd be ashamed!"
Lydia had a sense of being in a homely paradise where everything was
pleasantly at one, yet that she, companioned by the unclassified memory
of a woman whose place she held, had no part in the general harmony.
Next morning she overslept, and found herself alone. She heard Eben's
whistle from the barn and the guffaw of the hired men, to whom he was
telling pleasant tales, and there were women's voices from the kitchen,
and the fragrance of frying ham. She dressed in haste, and when she went
down the breakfast-table was ready, in great abundance, and everybody
waiting by their plates: Eben, aunt Phebe and her mild, soft-spoken
husband, and Sarah, the spectacled spinster daughter, who looked
benevolently dignified enough to be her mother's mother.
"Late? I guess not," said aunt Phebe, sinking into the chair behind the
coffee-pot. "Folks get up here when they're a mind to, an' when it comes
to Eben's wife--well, you can't say no more'n that in this house."
Lydia took her place rather shyly, but when Eben had found her hand
under the tablecloth and given it a welcoming squeeze, she felt more
than half at home. Aunt Phebe passed coffee, and beamed, and forgot to
serve herself in pressing food upon the others; but when the first pause
came, she leaned back and smiled at her new niece. Lydia looked up. She
met the smile and liked it. Aunt Phebe seemed a good deal more than a