Country Neighbors

								

up. Don't anybody live there now?"
"Yes," answered Amelia, "somebody lives there." The red had come into
her cheeks, and her eyes burned brightly. Then as he looked at her
hesitatingly, in the way he used to look, she trembled a little.
"Come in, Jared," she said, retreating a hospitable space. "Come right
in."
She stood aside, and then, when he stepped over the sill, led the way
into the dining-room, where there was a cool green light from the
darkened blinds, and the only window open to the sun disclosed a
trembling grapevine and a vista down the garden path. Amelia drew
forward a chair, with a decided motion.
"Sit down," she said, and busied herself with opening a blind.
When she took her own chair opposite him, she found that he had laid his
hat beside him on the floor, and, with the tips of his fingers together,
was bending forward in an attitude belonging to his youth. He was
regarding her with the slightly blurred look of his near-sighted eyes,
and she began hastily to speak.
"You stayin' round these parts?"
"No," said Jared, "no. I had to come east on business. There was some
property to be settled up in Beulah, so I thought I'd jest step down
here an' see how things were."
"Beulah!" she repeated. "Why, that's fifty miles from here!"
"Yes," returned Jared. "It's a matter o' fifty mile. Fact is," he said
uneasily, "I didn't know how you was fixed. It's kinder worried me."
A flush ran into her face, to the roots of her pretty hair; yet her
frank eyes never left him. Then her evasive speech belied her look.
"I get along real well. I s'pose you knew mother wa'n't with me now?"
"I ain't heard a word from here for seventeen year," he said, half
bitterly, as if the silence had been hard to bear. "There's no way for
me to hear now. The last was from Tom Merrick. He said you'd begun to
go with Rufus Knowles."
Amelia trembled over her whole body.
"That was a good while ago," she ventured.
"Yes, 'twas. A good many things have come an' gone. An' now Rufus is
dead--I see his death in an old paper--an' here you be, his widder,
livin' in the old house."
"Why!" breathed Amelia, "why!" She choked upon the word, but before she
could deny it he had begun again, in gentle reminiscence.
"'Twon't harm nobody to talk over old times a mite, Amelia. Mebbe that's
what I come on for, though I thought 'twas to see how you was fixed. I
thought mebbe I should find you livin' kinder near the wind, an' mebbe
you'd let me look out for you a mite."
The tears came into Amelia's eyes. She looked about her as if she owned
the room, the old china, and the house.
"That's real good of you, Jared," she said movingly. "I sha'n't ever
forget it. But you see for yourself. I don't want for nothin'."
"I guess we should ha' thought 'twas queer, when you went trottin' by to
school," he said irrelevantly, "if anybody'd told you you'd reign over
the old Knowles house."
"Yes," said Amelia softly, again looking about her, this time with love