Tiverton Tales

								

in seeing Della playing croquet, and always playing alone. That was a
very busy summer, because the famous drought came then, and water had to
be carried for weary rods from spring and river. Sometimes Della did not
get her playtime till three in the afternoon, sometimes not till after
dark; but she was faithful to her joy. The croquet ground suffered
varying fortunes. It might happen that the balls were potatoes, when
apples failed to be in season; often her wickets broke, and stood up in
two ragged horns. Sometimes one fell away altogether, and Della, like
the planets, kept an unseen track. Once or twice, the mistaken
benevolence of others gave her real distress. The minister's daughter,
noting her solitary game, mistook it for forlornness, and, in the warmth
of her maiden heart, came to ask if she might share. It was a timid
though official benevolence; but Della's bright eyes grew dark. She
clung to her kitchen chair.
"I guess I won't," she said, and, in some dim way, everybody began to
understand that this was but an intimate and solitary joy. She had grown
so used to spreading her banquets for one alone that she was frightened
at the sight of other cups upon the board; for although loneliness
begins in pain, by and by, perhaps, it creates its own species of sad
and shy content.
Della did not have a long life; and that was some relief to us who were
not altogether satisfied with her outlook here. The place she left need
not be always desolate. There was a good maiden sister to keep the
house, and Eben and the children would be but briefly sorry. They could
recover their poise; he with the health of a simple mind, and they as
children will. Yet he was truly stunned by the blow; and I hoped, on the
day of the funeral, that he did not see what I did. When we went out to
get our horse and wagon, I caught my foot in something which at once
gave way. I looked down--at a broken wicket and a withered apple by the
stake.
Quite at the other end of the town is a dooryard which, in my own mind,
at least, I call the traveling garden. Miss Nancy, its presiding
mistress, is the victim of a love of change; and since she may not
wander herself, she transplants shrubs and herbs from nook to nook. No
sooner does a green thing get safely rooted than Miss Nancy snatches it
up and sets it elsewhere. Her yard is a varying pageant of plants in all
stages of misfortune. Here is a shrub, with faded leaves, torn from the
lap of prosperity in a well-sunned corner to languish under different
conditions. There stands a hardy bush, shrinking, one might guess, under
all its bravery of new spring green, from the premonition that Miss
Nancy may move it to-morrow. Even the ladies'-delights have their months
of garish prosperity, wherein they sicken like country maids; for no
sooner do they get their little feet settled in a dark, still corner
than they are summoned out of it, to sunlight bright and strong. Miss