Mrs. Tree

"Yes, I would! wake her up out of a sound sleep at ten o'clock at night, and scare her into convulsions. Sit down, Willy Jaquith; do as I tell you! There! feel pretty well, hey? Your mother is blind."

"Oh, Mother! Mother! and I have left her alone all this time."

"Exactly! now don't go into a caniption, for it won't do any good. You must go to bed now, and, what's more, go to sleep; and we'll go down together in the morning. Here's Direxia now with the gruel. There! hush! don't say a word!"

The old serving-woman entered bearing a silver tray, on which was a covered bowl of India china, a small silver saucepan, and something covered with a napkin. William Jaquith went to a certain corner and brought out a teapoy of violet wood, which he set down at the old lady's elbow.

"There!" said Direxia Hawkes. "Did you ever?"

She was shaking all over, but she set the tray down carefully. Jaquith took the saucepan from her hand and set it on the hob. Then he lifted the napkin. Under it were two plates, one of biscuits, the other of small cakes shaped like a letter S.

"Snaky cakies!" said Will Jaquith. "Oh, Direxia! give me a cake and I'll give you a kiss! Is that right, you dear old thing?"

He stooped to kiss the withered brown cheek; the old woman caught up her apron to her face.

"It's him! it's him! it's one of my little boys, but where's the other? Oh, Mis' Tree, I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"

Mrs. Tree watched her, dry-eyed.

"Cry away, so long as you don't cry into the gruel," she said, kindly. "You are an old goose, Direxia Hawkes. I haven't been able to cry for ten years, Willy. Here! take the 'postle spoon and stir it. Has she brought a cup for you?"

"Well, I should hope I had!" said Direxia, drying her eyes. "I ain't quite lost my wits, Mis' Tree."

"You never had enough to lose!" retorted her mistress. "Hark! there's Jocko wanting his gruel. Bring him in; and mind you take a sup yourself before you go to bed, Direxia! You're all shaken up."

"Gadzooks!" said the parrot. "The cup that cheers! Go to bed, Direxia! Direxia Hawkes, wife of Guy Fawkes!"

"Now look at that!" said Direxia. "Ain't you ashamed, Willy Jaquith? He ain't said that since you went away."

The next morning was bright and clear. Mrs. Malvina Weight, sweeping her front chamber, with an anxious eye on the house opposite, saw the door open and Mrs. Tree come out, followed by a tall young man. The old lady wore the huge black velvet bonnet, surmounted by a bird of paradise, which she had brought from Paris forty years before, and an India shawl which had pointed a moral to the pious of Elmerton for more than that length of time. "Adorning her perishing back with what would put food in the mouth of twenty Christian heathens for a year!" was the way Mrs. Weight herself expressed it.

This morning, however, Mrs. Weight had no eyes for her aged neighbor. Every faculty she possessed was bent on proving the identity of the stranger. He kept his face turned from her in a way that was most exasperating. Could it be the man she saw last night? If her eyes were going as bad as that, she must see the optician next time he came through the village, and be fitted a new pair of glasses; it was scandalous, after paying him the price she did no more than five years ago, and him saying they'd last her lifetime. Why, this was a gentleman, sure enough. It must be the same, and them shadows, looking like rags, deceived her. Well, anybody living, except Mis' Tree, would have said his name, if it wasn't but just for neighborliness. Who could it be? Not that Doctor Strong back again, just when they were well rid of him? No, this man was taller, and stoop-shouldered. Seemed like she had seen that back before.

She gazed with passionate yearning till the pair passed out of sight, the ancient woman leaning on the young man's arm, yet stepping briskly along, her ebony staff tapping the sidewalk smartly.

Mrs. Weight called over the stairs.

"Isick, be you there?"

"Yep!"

"Why ain't you to school, I'd like to know? Since you be here, jest run round through Candy's yard and come back along the street, that's a good boy, and see who that is Mis' Tree's got with her."

"I can't! I got the teethache!" whined Isaac.

"It won't hurt your teethache any. Run now, and I'll make you a saucer-pie next time I'm baking."

"You allers say that, and then you never!" grumbled Isaac, dragging reluctant feet toward the door.

"Isick Weight, don't you speak to me like that! I'll tell your pa, if you don't do as I tell you."

"Well, ain't I goin', quick as I can? I won't go through Candy's yard, though; that mean Tom Candy's waitin' for me now with a big rock, 'cause I got him sent home for actin' in school. I'll go and ask the man who he is. S'pose he knows."

"You won't do nothing of the sort. There! no matter – it's too late now. You're a real aggravatin', naughty-actin' boy, Isick Weight, and I believe you've been sent home your own self for cuttin' up – not that I doubt Tommy Candy was, too. I shall ask your father to whip you good when he gits home."

"Well, Mary Jaquith, here you sit."

"Mrs. Tree! Is this you? My dear soul, what brings you out so early in the morning? Come in! come in! Who is with you?"

"I didn't say any one was with me!" snapped Mrs. Tree. "Don't you go to setting up double-action ears like mine, Mary, because you are not old enough. How are you? obstinate as ever?"

The blind woman smiled. In her plain print dress, she had the air of a masquerading duchess, and her blue eyes were as clear and beautiful as those which were watching her from the door.

"Take this chair," she said, pushing forward a straight-backed armchair. "It's the one you always like. How am I obstinate, dear Mrs. Tree?"

"If I've asked you once to come and live with me, I've asked you fifty times," grumbled the old lady, sitting down with a good deal of flutter and rustle. "There I must stay, left alone at my age, with nobody but that old goose of a Direxia Hawkes to look after me. And all because you like to be independent. Set you up! Well, I sha'n't ask you again, and so I've come to tell you, Mary Jaquith."

"Dear old friend, you forgive me, I know. You never can have thought for a moment, seriously, that I could be a burden on your kind hands. There surely is some one with you, Mrs. Tree! Is it Direxia? Please be seated, whoever it is."

She turned her beautiful face and clear, quiet eyes toward the door. There was a slight sound, as of a sob checked in the outbreak. Mrs. Tree shook her head, fiercely. The blind woman rose from her seat, very pale.

"Who is it?" she said. "Be kind, please, and tell me."

"I'm going to tell you," said Mrs. Tree, "if you will have patience for two minutes, and not drive every idea out of my head with your questions. Mary, I – I had a visitor last night. Some one came to see me – an old acquaintance – who had – who had heard of Willy lately. Willy is – doing well, my dear. Now, Mary Jaquith, if you don't sit down, I won't say another word. Of all the unreasonable women I ever saw in my life – "

Mrs. Tree stopped, and rose abruptly from her seat. The blind woman was holding out her arms with a heavenly gesture of appeal, of welcome, of love unutterable: her face was the face of an angel. Another moment, and her son's arms were round her, and her head on his bosom, and he was crying over and over again, "Mother! mother! mother!" as if he could not have enough of the word.

"Arthur was a nice boy, too!" said Mrs. Tree, as she closed the door behind her.

Five minutes later, Mrs. Weight, hurrying up the plank walk which led to the Widow Jaquith's door, was confronted by the figure of her opposite neighbor, sitting on the front doorstep, leaning her chin on her stick, and looking, as Mrs. Weight told the deacon afterward, like Satan's grandmother.

"Want to see Mary Jaquith?" asked Mrs. Tree. "Well, she's engaged, and you can't. Here! give me your arm, Viny, and take me over to the girls'. I want to see how Phœbe is this morning. She was none too spry yesterday."

CHAPTER VI.

THE NEW POSTMASTER

Politics had little hold in Elmerton. When any question of public interest was to be settled, the elders of the village met and settled it; if they disagreed among themselves, they went to Mrs. Tree, and she told them what to do. People sometimes wondered what would happen when Mrs. Tree died, but there seemed no immediate danger of this.

"Truth and Trees live forever!" was the saying in the village.

When Israel Nudd, the postmaster, died, Elmerton found little difficulty in recommending his successor. The day after his funeral, the elders assembled at the usual place of meeting, the post-office piazza. This was a narrow platform running along one side of the post-office building, and commanding a view of the sea. A row of chairs stood along the wall on their hind legs. They might be supposed to have lost the use of their fore legs, simply because they never were used. In these chairs the elders sat, and surveyed the prospect.

"Tide's makin'," said John Peavey.

No one seemed inclined to contradict this statement.

"Water looks rily," John Peavey continued. "Goin' to be a change o' weather."