Country Neighbors

								

feel very rich. Now, a woman, she sat in the great house sewing, and
felt rich again. As it happened, for one of the many times it came to
her, she was thinking what the great house had done for her. Old lady
Knowles had, in her stately way, been a kind of patron saint, and in
that summer, years ago, when Amelia's romance died and she had drooped
like a starving plant, Rufus, the old lady's son, had seemed to see her
trouble and stood by her. He did not speak of it. He only took her for
long drives, and made his cheerful presence evident in many ways, and
when he died, with a tragic suddenness, Amelia used selfishly to feel
that he had lived at least long enough to keep her from failing of that
inner blight.
On this day when old lady Knowles had gone with Ann, her faithful help,
to see the cousin to whom she made pilgrimage once a year, Amelia
resolved to enjoy herself to the full. She laid down her sewing, from
time to time, to look about her at the poppy-strewn paper, the four-post
bed and flowered tester, the great fireplace with its shining dogs, and
the Venus and Cupid mirror. Over and over again she had played that the
house was hers, and to-day, through some heralding excitement in the
air, it seemed doubly so. She sat in a dream of housewifely possession,
conning idly over the pleasant things she might do before the day was
over. There was cold tongue for her dinner, Ann had told her, and a
clear soup, if she liked to heat it. She might cook vegetables if she
chose. And there was the best of tea to be made out of the china caddy,
and rich cake in the parlor crock. After one such glad deliberation, she
caught her sewing guiltily up from her lap and began to set compensating
stitches. But even then her conscience slept unstirred. Old lady Knowles
was in no hurry for the work, she knew, and she would make up for her
dreaming in the account of her day.
There was a sound without. The gate swung softly shut and a man came up
the path. Amelia, at the glance, rose quickly, dropped her sewing, and
hurried out and down the stairs. The front door was open, she knew, and
though there was never anything to be afraid of, still the house was in
her charge. At the door she met him, just lifting his hand to touch the
knocker. He was a tall, weedy fellow of something more than her own age,
with light hair and blue eyes and a strangely arrested look, as if he
obstinately, and against his own advantage, continued to keep young.
Amelia knew him at once, as he did her, though it was twenty years since
they had met.
"Why, Jared Beale!" she faltered.
He was much moved. The flush came quickly to his face in a way she had
known, and his eyes softened.
"I should ha' recognized ye anywheres, Milly," he asserted.
She still stood looking at him, unable to ask him in or to make apology
for the lack.
"I went straight to your house from the train," he said. "'Twas all shut