Country Neighbors

								

should appear for an evening's gossip.
Miss Letty's house was at the end of a narrow way, bordered by
cinnamon-roses and stragglers from old gardens; and some of the
neighbors said it would make them as nervous as a witch to be so far
from the road. But it did not make Miss Letty nervous. For some reason,
perhaps because of long usage, it helped her feel secure.
"Well," she was saying mildly to Cap'n Oliver, "I'm gettin' along in
years. What's the use of denyin' it? That's what Ellery said in his
letter. 'You're 'most fifty, Aunt Letty,' says he. 'Time to quit livin'
alone an' come out here an' let us take care o' you.'"
Cap'n Oliver scowled at the fire as if he found the freshly burning
sticks too strong to be smashed, and resented it.
"Well," said he, "I'm fifty-four. Let 'em come to me."
"Now, be you really?" asked Miss Letty, in a pretty surprise, though she
knew all the calendar of his life from the day she went to school for
the first time and heard him, in the second reader, profusely
interpreting a martial declaration to the Romans. "Well, who'd have
thought it!"
"I don't know," said Cap'n Oliver, staring into the fire, "as I'm any
less of a man because I'm fifty-four years old. S'pose anybody should
come to me an' say: 'Now you're fifty-four, cap'n. You better shut up
shop an' go an' live in Washington Territory.'"
"It ain't Washington Territory," said Miss Letty, setting him right with
a becoming air of humility. "It's Chicago they live to, Ellery an'
Mary."
"Be that as it may," said the cap'n, "I've eat off my own plates an'
drinked out o' my own cups a good many year, an' if anybody should try
to give me a home, I'll bet ye, Letty, I'd be as mad as a hornet. I
wisht you'd be mad, too. I'd think more of ye if ye was."
"You've been blest in a good housekeeper," said Miss Letty, in a gentle
recall. "It ain't many men left alone as you be that's got anybody
strong an' willin' like Sarah Ann Douglas to heft the burden an' lug it
right along."
"It ain't Sarah Ann Douglas," said the cap'n. "Sarah Ann's a good girl,
worth her weight in gold, an' growin' more valuable every day, but it
ain't she that's kep' a roof over my head. I've kep' it myself because
I would have it. So there ye be."
"Well, I dunno how 'tis," said Miss Letty. She was staring placidly into
the fire. "But I don't seem to have so much spirit as you have, Oliver.
Seems to me, if Ellery an' Mary are goin' to feel worried havin' me
livin' on here alone, mebbe I'd better sell off an' go back with 'em.
That's the way I look at it."
"You never had any way of your own," said the cap'n.
Miss Letty put out a firm, plump hand and presented him with the poker.
"That stick's 'most fell apart," she said pacifically. "Mebbe you better
give it a kind of a knock."
The cap'n did it absently and was soothed by the process. Then Miss
Letty laid the shortened pieces together in a workmanlike way, and they