Country Neighbors

								

blazed afresh.
"What you goin' to do with your things?" asked the cap'n, pointing a
broad and expressive thumb about the place.
"Sell 'em off. That's what Ellery wrote. He says I could have an auction
mebbe a week 'fore Thanksgivin',--that's about now,--an' then when he
an' Mary come we could all go over to cousin Liza's to stay, an' start
for Chicago from there. Seems if 'twas all complete."
The cap'n was staring at her.
"You ain't goin' to sell off your things without ay or no?" he inquired.
"Don't ye prize 'em--the table you've eat off of an' chairs you've set
in sence you were little?"
Miss Letty winced, and then recovered herself.
"Yes," she said, "I do prize 'em. But it seems if they'd got to go."
"Why don't ye take 'em with ye?"
"I couldn't do that, Oliver. Ellery has got his home furnished all
complete--oak chamber sets an' I dunno what all. There wouldn't be no
room for my old sticks."
The cap'n meditated.
"Letty," said he at length, "if there was anybody you ever set by after
your own father an' mother, 'twas my wife Mary."
"Yes," said Letty, with one of her warmly earnest looks. "Mary an' I was
always a good deal to one another."
"Well, do you know what she said to me once? 'Twas in her last sickness.
She was tracin' back over old times, that year you an' I was together so
much, goin' to singin'-school an' all. You had a good voice,
Letty--voice like a bird. You recollect that year, don't ye?"
"Yes," said Letty. Her voice trembled a little. "I recollect."
"That was the spring Mary kinder broke down an' went into a decline,
an' you journeyed off to Dill River, an' made that long visit. An' when
you come back, Mary an' I was engaged. Well, I'm gettin' ahead of my
story. What Mary said was, 'Oliver,' says she, 'you don't know half how
good Letty is. Nobody knows but me. It's her own fault,' says she. 'She
gives up too much, an' it makes the rest of us selfish.'"
"Did she say that?" asked Letty. She was awakened to a vivid recognition
of something beyond the outer significance of the words. Then she seemed
to lay her momentary emotion aside, as if it were something she could
cover out of sight. She laughed a little. "Well," she said, "I guess I
don't give up much nowadays. I ain't got so very much to give."
Cap'n Oliver rose and carefully arranged the fire as if there would be
no one to do it after he was gone. Miss Letty loved that little custom.
It seemed a kind of special service, and often, after he had done it and
taken his leave, she went to bed earlier than she had intended because,
when his fire had burned out, she could not bear to rearrange it.
"Well," said he, "you bear it in mind, what Mary said. Sometimes you
give up too much. You've gi'n up all your life, an' now you're goin' to
give up to Ellery an' Mary. You think twice, Letty, that's all I say.
Think twice."
He shook hands with her gravely, according to their habit, and she
heard his steps along the frozen lane. Then she opened the door softly a