Country Neighbors

								

Sue leaned over the gate and whispered rapidly:
"I'll tell you somethin' else, only don't you let it go no further.
Mother says might as well not count your chickens till they're hatched,
and aunt Templeton was left at the meetin'-house door. He asked me seven
weeks ago come Wednesday, and I've got lots of my sewin' done. Some of
my trimmin' 's real pretty. You come over'n' see it. Good-by. Don't you
tell."
She walked carelessly away down the road, not casting a glance behind.
But Milton was coming, a tall fellow, like his sweetheart heavy and
honest of face. They might have been brother and sister for the likeness
between them.
Ellen withdrew from the gate and hurried back to her mother. "Come," she
urged hastily, "let's go in."
Mrs. Withington was bent almost double, pressing the earth about the
cramped geranium roots. She felt the delight of their freedom, with all
the world to spread in.
"I ain't got quite through," she said, without looking up. "You cold?
Run right along. I'll come."
But Ellen only flitted round the house into a deeper shade and waited.
She hardly knew why, except that she was disinclined to see any more
people walking two and two, with that significant and terrifying future
before them.
The next morning, drawn by some subtle power, she went over to Susan's,
and after sitting awhile on the doorstep, they slipped upstairs into the
front chamber, and opened drawer after drawer of fine white clothing,
wonderfully trimmed.
"Long-cloth!" said Susan, in a whisper. "Here's some unbleached. We had
it on the grass last year; seemed as if it never'd whiten out. That's
for every day."
Ellen looked, in the short-breathed wonder which sometimes beset her
over a new blossom. She touched the fabric delicately and lifted an edge
of crocheted lace.
"Let's go over to Maria's," said Susan. "I'll make her show you hers."
They took the short round of the village homes where there were
daughters young and still unwed. Everywhere white cloth, serpentine
braid, and crocheted lace! Truly it was a marrying year. Ellen said very
little, and the girls, talking among themselves, forgot to notice her
any more than a flower in a vase.
But that late afternoon was very warm, and when she and her mother sat
together on the steps considering rose-bugs, she suddenly broke off to
say,--
"Mother, should you just as soon I'd have some new things, trimmed like
the girls'?"
Mrs. Withington regarded her in wonder. Ellen did not lift her eyes, but
a blush rose delicately in her cheeks.
"Well, I don't know but what 'twould be a good plan," said her mother,
after a pause. "You ain't got an individual thing that's trimmed."
So next day they walked the two miles to town, and for weeks thereafter
stayed indoors, setting stitches in snowy cloth, with piles of it
drifted near. For a time that spring, the garden almost ran to weeds.
Then, because a long dormant consciousness stirred in Mrs. Withington,