Country Neighbors

								

it tremulously.
"You darling one!" she murmured under her breath; and somehow she knew
that this was the only sort of kiss she should ever want to give.

THE AUCTION

Miss Letitia Lamson sat by the open fire, at a point where she could
easily reach the tongs for the adjusting of any vagabond stick, and
Cap'n Oliver Drown, in the opposite angle, held dominion over the poker.
No one else would Miss Letitia have admitted to partnership in the
managing of her fire; but Cap'n Oliver wielded an undisputed privilege.
The poker suited him because he had a way, in the heat of friendly
dissension, of smashing a stick much before it was ready to drop apart
of its own charring; and that Miss Letitia never resented. She herself
was gentle and persuasive with a fire; but the cap'n's more impetuous
method seemed to belong to him, and she understood, without much
thinking about it, that when he blustered a little, even over a
hard-working blaze, it was because he must. He was a tempestuously
organized creature, of a martial front and a baby heart, most fortunate
in his breadth of shoulder, his height, and the readiness of the
choleric blood to come into his cheeks, the eagerness of his husky voice
to bluster.
These outward tokens of an untrammeled spirit helped him to hold his own
among his kind, though his oldest friend, Miss Letty, prized him for
different reasons. In her soul she had always regarded him as "real
cunning," and had even, when she passed to bring up the dish of apples
from the cellar, or a mug of cider, longed to touch the queer lock that
would straggle down from his sparsely covered poll in absurd travesty of
a baby's tended curl.
Probably no one, and certainly not the captain himself, knew exactly how
Miss Letty regarded him. Miss Letty had been forty-seven years old the
last November that ever was, as she had just told him, in talking over
her forthcoming departure from the house where she had lived all the
forty-seven years; and he knew, she added, just how she felt about the
place and all that was in it. The cap'n nodded gravely, thinking, if it
paid to say so, that he knew how the town looked upon her. She was good
as gold, the neighbors said, and at that moment she especially looked
it, in a still, serious way. She was a wholesome woman, with nothing
showy to commend her and little to remark except the extreme earnestness
of her upward glance. From her unconscious humility she seemed to be
always gazing up at people, even when their eyes were on a level with
hers. It might have indicated a habit of mind.
It was only to-night that the rumor of her going had reached Cap'n
Oliver, and he had come in to talk it over. Miss Letty's heart quieted
as she saw him take her father's capacious armchair and settle on the
appliqué cushion, so sacred to him that whenever the cat stole a nap out
of it, stray hairs had to be brushed scrupulously off, lest Cap'n Oliver