Country Neighbors

								

Amelia lifted a thankful look.
"I'm proper glad you've come back, Jared," she said simply. "I never had
any expectation of seein' you again, leastways not in this world."
Jared spoke irrelevantly:--
"There's a good many things I've wanted to talk over with you, 'Melia,
from time to time. Now there's Arthur."
Amelia nodded.
"He ain't done very well, has he?" she inquired. "I never knew much
about him after he moved away; but seems if I heard he'd took to drink."
"That's it. Arthur was as good a boy as ever stepped, but he got led
away when he wa'n't old enough to know t'other from which. Well, I've
always stood by him, 'Melia. Folks say he's only an adopted brother.
'What you want to hang on to him for, an' send good money after bad?'
That's what they say. Well, what if he is an adopted brother? Father
an' mother set by him, an' I set by him, too."
He had a worried look, and his tone rang fretfully, as if it continued a
line of dreary argument.
"Of course you set by him, Jared," said Amelia, almost indignantly. "I
shouldn't feel the same towards you if you didn't."
Jared was deep in the relief of his pathetic confidences.
"Arthur married young, an' folks said he'd no business to, nothin' to
live on, an' his habits bein' what they were. Well, I couldn't dispute
that. But when he got that fall, so 't he laid there paralyzed, I wanted
to take the cars an' go right on to York State an' see him. I didn't. I
couldn't get away; but I sent him all I could afford to, an' I'm goin'
to keep on sendin' jest as long as I'm above ground. An' I've made my
will an' provided for him."
His voice had a fractious tone, as if he combated an unseen tyrant.
Amelia dared not speak. At a word, she felt, he might say too much. Now
Jared was looking at her in a bright appeal, as if, sure as he was of
her sympathy, he besought the expression of it.
"There ain't a soul but you knows I've made my will, 'Melia," he said.
"There's suthin' in it for you, too."
Amelia shrank, and her eyes betrayed her terror; it was as if she could
carry on their relation together quite happily, but as soon as the
judgment of the world were challenged she must hide it away, like a
treasure in a box.
"No, Jared!" she breathed. "No, oh, no! Don't you do such a thing as
that."
Jared laughed a little, but half sadly.
"Seems kinder queer to me now," he owned, "now I see you settin' here,
only to put out your hand an' take a thing if you want it. Did Rufus
leave a will?"
Amelia shrank still smaller.
"No," she trembled; "no, he didn't leave a will."
"Well, I sha'n't change mine, 'Melia." He spoke with an ostentatious
lightness, but Amelia was aware that his mind labored in heavy seas of
old regret, buoyed by the futile hope of compensating her age for the
joys her youth had lacked. "I guess I'll let it stand as 'tis, an', long
as you don't need what I've left ye, why, you can put it into some kind