Country Neighbors

								

and thankfulness, "I guess they would. You leave your wife well?" she
asked suddenly, perhaps to suggest the reality of his own house of life.
Jared shook his head.
"She ain't stepped a step for seven year."
"Oh, my!" grieved Amelia. "Won't she ever be any better?"
"No. We've had all the doctors, eclectic an' herb besides, an' they
don't give her no hope. She was a great driver. We laid up money steady
them years before she was took down. She knew how to make an' she knew
how to save."
His face settled into lines of brooding recollection. Immediately Amelia
was aware that those years had been bitter to him, and that the fruit of
them was stale and dry. She cut by instinct into a pleasant by-path.
"You play your fiddle any now?"
He started out of his maze at life.
"No," he owned, "no!" as if he hardly remembered such a thing had been.
"I dropped that more'n fifteen year ago."
"Seems if my feet never could keep still when you played 'Money Musk,'"
avowed Amelia, her eyes shining. "'The Road to Boston,' too! My! wa'n't
that grand!"
"'Twas mostly dance-music I knew," said Jared. "She never liked it," he
added, in a burst of weary confidence.
"Your wife?"
"She was a church member, old-fashioned kind. Didn't believe in dancin'.
'The devil's tunes,' she called 'em. Well, mebbe they were; but I kinder
liked 'em myself."
"Well," said Amelia, in a safe commonplace, "I guess there's some harm
in 'most everything. It's 'cordin' to the way you take it." Then one of
her quick changes came upon her. The self that played at life when real
life failed her, and so kept youth alive, awoke to shine in her eyes and
flush her pretty cheek. She looked about the room, as if to seek
concurrence from the hearthside gods. "Jared," she said, "you goin' to
stay round here long?"
He made an involuntary motion toward his hat.
"No, oh, no," he answered. "I'm goin' 'cross lots to the Junction. I
come round the road. I guess 'tain't more'n four mile along by the pine
woods an' the b'ilin' spring," he added, smiling at her. "Leastways it
didn't use to be. I thought if I could get the seven-o'clock, 'twould
take me back to Boston so 's I could ketch my train to-night. She's
kinder dull, out there alone," he ended, wearily. "'Twas some o' her
property I come to settle up. She'll want to hear about it. I never was
no kind of a letter-writer."
Amelia rose.
"I'll tell you what, then," she said, with a sweet decision, "you stay
right here an' have dinner. I'm all alone to-day."
"Ain't old lady Knowles--" He paused decorously, and Amelia laughed. It
seemed to her as if old lady Knowles and the house would always be
beneficently there because they always had been.
"Law, yes," she said. "She's alive. So's old Ann. They've gone to
Wareham, to spend the day."
Jared threw back his head and laughed.
"If that don't make time stand still," he said, "nothin' ever did. Why,