Mrs. Tree

"Quite so, Cousin Homer!" replied Miss Phœbe, with a stately bend of her head. "I congratulate you upon the alteration. Satan has no place in an Elmerton parlor, especially when honored by the presence of its pastor."

CHAPTER IX.

A GARDEN PARTY

It was a golden morning in mid-October; one of those mornings when Summer seems to turn in her footsteps, and come back to search for something she had left behind. Wherever one looked was gold: gold of maple and elm leaves, gold of late-lingering flowers, gold of close-shorn fields. Over and in and through it all, airy gold of quivering, dancing sunbeams.

No spot in all Elmerton was brighter than Mrs. Tree's garden, which took the morning sun full in the face. Here were plenty of flowers still, marigolds, coreopsis, and chrysanthemums, all drinking in the sun-gold and giving it out again, till the whole place quivered with light and warmth.

Mrs. Tree, clad in an antique fur-trimmed pelisse, with an amazing garden hat surmounting her cap, sat in a hooded wicker chair on the porch talking to William Jaquith, who was tying up roses and covering them with straw.

"Yes; such things mostly go crisscross," she was saying. "Careful with that Bride Blush, Willy; that young scamp of a Geoffrey Strong gave it to me, and I suppose I shall have to tend it the rest of my days. Humph! pity you didn't know him; he might have done something for that cough. He got the girl he wanted, but more often they don't. Look at James Stedman! and there's Homer Hollopeter has been in love with Mary Ashton ever since he was in petticoats."

"With Mary – do you mean my mother?" said Jaquith, looking up.

"She wasn't your mother when he began!" said the old lady, tartly. "He couldn't foresee that she was going to be, could he? If he had he might have asked your permission. She preferred George Jaquith, naturally. Women mostly prefer a handsome scamp. Not that Homer ever looked like anything but a sheep. Then there was Lily Bent – "

She broke off suddenly. "You're tying that all crooked, Will Jaquith. I'll come and do it myself if you can't do better than that."

"I'll have it right in a moment, Mrs. Tree. You were saying – something about Lily Bent?"

"There are half a dozen lilies bent almost double!" Mrs. Tree declared, peevishly. "Careless! I paid five dollars for that Golden Lily, young man, and you handle it as if it were a yellow turnip."

"Mrs. Tree!"

"Well, what is it? It's time for me to have my nap, I expect."

"Mrs. Tree," – the young man's voice was earnest and pleading, – "I brought you a letter from Lily Bent this morning. I have been waiting – I want to hear something about her. I know she has been an angel of tenderness and goodness to my mother ever since – why does she stay away so long?"

"Because she's having a good time, I suppose," said Mrs. Tree, dryly. "She's been tied close enough these last three years, what with her grandmother and – one thing and another. The old woman's dead now, and small loss. Everybody's dead, I believe, except me and a parcel of silly children. I forget what you said became of that – of your wife after she left you."

"She died," said Jaquith, abstractedly. "Didn't I tell you? They went South, and she took yellow fever. It was only a month after – "

"No, you did not!" cried Mrs. Tree, sitting bolt upright. "You never told me a word, Willy Jaquith. What Providence was thinking of when it made this generation, passes me to conceive. If I couldn't make a better one out of fish-glue and calico, I'd give up. Bah! I've no patience with you."

She struck her stick sharply on the floor, and her little hands trembled.

"I am sorry we don't amount to more," said Jaquith, smiling, "But – I think my glue is hardening, Mrs. Tree. Tell me where Lily Bent is, that's a dear good soul, and why she stays away so long."

"I can't!" cried the old woman, and she wrung her hands. "I cannot, Willy."

"You cannot, and my mother will not," repeated William Jaquith, slowly. "And there is no one else I can or will ask. Why can you not tell me, Mrs. Tree? I think you have no right to refuse me so much information."

"Because I promised not to tell you!" cried Mrs. Tree. "There! don't speak to me, or I shall go into a caniption! If I had known, I never would have promised. I never made a promise yet that I wasn't sorry for. Dear me, Sirs! I wonder if ever anybody was so pestered as I am.

"There! there's James Stedman. Call him over here! and don't you speak a word to me, Willy Jaquith, but finish those plants, if you are ever going to."

Obeying Jaquith's hail, Doctor Stedman, who had been for passing with a bow and a wave of the hand, turned and came up the garden walk.

"Good morning, James Stedman," said Mrs. Tree. "You haven't been near me for a month. I might be dead and buried twenty times over for all you know or care about me. A pretty kind of doctor you are!"

"What do you want of me, Mrs. Tree?" asked Doctor Stedman, laughing, and shaking the little brown hand held out to him. "I'll come once a week, if you don't take care, and then what would you say? What do you want of me, my lady?"

"I don't want my bones crushed, just for the sake of giving you the job of mending them," said the old lady. "I'd as lief shake paws with a grizzly bear. You are getting to look rather like one, my poor James. I've always told you that if you would only shave, you might have a better chance – but never mind about that now. You were wanting to know where Lily Bent was."

"Was I?" said Doctor Stedman, wondering. "Lily Bent! why, I haven't – "

"Yes, you have," said Mrs. Tree, sharply. "Or if you haven't, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. She is staying with George Greenwell's folks, over at Parsonsbridge; his wife was her father's sister, a wall-eyed woman with crockery teeth. George Greenwell, Parsonsbridge, do you hear? There! now I must go and take my nap, and plague take everybody, I say. Good morning to you!"

Rising from her seat with amazing celerity, she whisked into the house before Doctor Stedman's astonished eyes, and closed the door smartly after her.

With a low whistle, Doctor Stedman turned to William Jaquith.

"Our old friend seems agitated," he said. "What has happened to distress her?"

Jaquith made no reply. He was tying up a rosebush with shaking fingers, and his usually pale face was flushed, perhaps with exertion.

Doctor Stedman's bushy eyebrows came together.

"Hum!" he said, half aloud. "Lily Bent! why, – ha! yes. How is your mother, Will? I have not seen her for some time."

"She's very well, thank you, sir!" said Will Jaquith, hurrying on his coat, and gathering up his gardening tools. "If you will excuse me, Doctor Stedman, I must get back to the office; Mr. Homer will be looking for me; he gave me this hour off, to see to Mrs. Tree's roses. Good day."

"Now, what is going on here?" said James Stedman to himself, as, still standing on the porch, he watched the young man going off down the street with long strides. "The air is full of mystery – and prickles. And why is Lily Bent – pretty creature! Why, I haven't seen her since I came back, haven't laid eyes on her! Why is she brought into it? H'm! let me see! Wasn't there a boy and girl attachment between her and Willy Jaquith? To be sure there was! I can see them now going to school together, he carrying her satchel. Then – she had a long bout of slow fever, I remember. Pottle attended her, and it's a wonder – h'm! But wasn't that about the time when that little witch, Ada Vere, came here, and turned both the boys' heads, and carried off poor Willy, and half broke Arthur's heart? H'm! Well, I don't know what I can do about it. Hum! pretty it all looks here! If there isn't the strawberry bush, grown out of all knowledge! We were big children, Vesta and I, before we gave up hoping that it would bear strawberries. How we used to play here!"

His eyes wandered about the pleasant place, resting with friendly recognition on every knotty shrub and ancient vine.

"The snowball is grown a great tree. How long is it since I have really been in this garden? Passing through in a hurry, one doesn't see things. That must be the rose-flowered hawthorn. My dear little Vesta! I can see her now with the wreath I made for her one day. She was a little pink rose then under the rosy wreath; now she is a white one, but more a rose than ever. Whom have we here?"

A wagon had drawn up by the garden gate with two sleepy white horses. A brown, white-bearded face was turned toward the doctor.

"Hello, doc'," said a cheery voice. "I want to know if that's you!"

"Nobody else, Mr. Butters! What is the good word with you? Are you coming in, or shall I – "

But Mr. Ithuriel Butters was already clambering down from his seat, and now came up the garden walk carrying a parcel in his hand. An old man of patriarchal height and build, with hair and beard to match. Dress him in flowing robes or in armor of brass and you would have had Abraham or a chief of the Maccabees, "'cordin' to," as he would have said. As it was, he was Old Man Butters of the Butterses Lane Ro'd, Shellback.

He gave Doctor Stedman a mighty grip, and surveyed him with friendly eyes.

"Wal, you've been in furrin parts sence I see ye. I expected you'd come back some kind of outlandishman, but I don't see but you look as nat'ral as nails in a door. Ben all over, hey? Seen the hull consarn?"

"Pretty near, Mr. Butters; I saw all I could hold, anyhow."

"See anything to beat the State of Maine?"

"I think not. No, certainly not."

"Take fall weather in the State of Maine," said Mr. Butters, slowly, his eyes roving about the sunlit garden; "take it when it's good – when it is good – it's good, sometimes! Not but what I've thought myself I should like to see furrin parts before I go. Don't want to appear ignorant where I'm goin', you understand. Mis' Tree to home, I presume likely?"