Country Neighbors. Alice Brown

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      "Don't you think some things—some troubles—are too hard to be talked about?"

      "I guess they be," assented Eben.

      "We keep thinkin' an' thinkin' 'em over, but we can't speak. Mebbe 'twould be better for us if we could."

      "Mebbe 'twould." Then he pulled out his pipe, as he did when the chariot of his affections neared an emotional pass. Eben was willing to graze a wheel by that abyss, but he skillfully avoided falling over.

      They were climbing a long hill; and the horse, head down, sagged sleepily along, pulling faithfully. But at the top he halted, as if it seemed he knew what was below, and waited for their wonder. Lydia's eyes were closed, and Eben had drawn the first puff at his pipe.

      "There," said he, "what think o' that?"

      Lydia opened her eyes and gave a little cry. They seemed to be at the top of everything—winding roads, like ribbons, patches of green that were ample woods, three dotted villages, and, full flare in their faces, the sunset sky. The red and gold of it had spread and lavished until the eye, to rest itself, was almost forced, for a calming glimpse, back again to the cold blue east. Lydia looked and could not speak. Eben knew too much even to glance at her. He felt all the wonder of it, and the pride, for it seemed to him that it was, in a way, his sky, because it was so much nearer home. They stayed there in silence while the beauty changed but never faded, and the horse dropped his head, to rest.

      "Well," said Eben at last, dryly, "I dunno 's ever I see such a sky as that, unless 'twas some I used to see with my first wife."

      For the first time he seemed cruel. A bitter thought shot up in Lydia's heart that at every feast there was to be the unbidden guest. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the sky had faded and the air was chill.

      "I guess you're gittin' tired again," said Eben tenderly. "Well, we'll be to aunt Phebe's by eight, an' she'll put you straight to bed."

      The tears had wet her cheeks. They were the first she had shown him, and he looked at them with dismay. "Hullo!" he cried, "hullo!" It was actual terror in his voice. "'Tain't so bad as that!"

      Lydia straightened herself in the buggy and wiped away the tears with an impatient hand.

      "I guess 'twas the sunset," she said tremulously. "I never see such a sky."

      "That all?" Eben was much relieved. Then he touched up the horse, and told him what a lot of oats were waiting in aunt Phebe's barn. "If that's all," he said, giving his mind to Lydia again, "you'll have to spend most o' your time in salt water. That's the kind o' sunsets we're goin' to have every night arter we get home. The doctor's ordered 'em."

      Lydia made herself laugh, and they talked no more until they drove up to a prosperous white house on the outskirts of the first village, and aunt Phebe came to meet them. It was all a joyous tumult that night, and Lydia went to bed early, with a confused sense that aunt Phebe was very kind and that she had gold-bowed glasses and shook the floor when she walked, and that the supper was a product of expert cooking. Eben was uproariously gay, in the degree of approaching home, and took aunt Phebe about the waist to waltz with her, whereupon she cuffed him with a futile hand, remarking:—

      "Eben Jakes, I'd be ashamed!"

      Lydia had a sense of being in a homely paradise where everything was pleasantly at one, yet that she, companioned by the unclassified memory of a woman whose place she held, had no part in the general harmony. Next morning she overslept, and found herself alone. She heard Eben's whistle from the barn and the guffaw of the hired men, to whom he was telling pleasant tales, and there were women's voices from the kitchen, and the fragrance of frying ham. She dressed in haste, and when she went down the breakfast-table was ready, in great abundance, and everybody waiting by their plates: Eben, aunt Phebe and her mild, soft-spoken husband, and Sarah, the spectacled spinster daughter, who looked benevolently dignified enough to be her mother's mother.

      "Late? I guess not," said aunt Phebe, sinking into the chair behind the coffee-pot. "Folks get up here when they're a mind to, an' when it comes to Eben's wife—well, you can't say no more'n that in this house."

      Lydia took her place rather shyly, but when Eben had found her hand under the tablecloth and given it a welcoming squeeze, she felt more than half at home. Aunt Phebe passed coffee, and beamed, and forgot to serve herself in pressing food upon the others; but when the first pause came, she leaned back and smiled at her new niece. Lydia looked up. She met the smile and liked it. Aunt Phebe seemed a good deal more than a mother to the nice spinster daughter. She looked as if there were mother-stuff enough in her to pass around and nourish and bless the world. Aunt Phebe was speaking.

      "Now," said she, "I didn't have more'n half a glimpse at you last night, Lyddy, such a surprise an' all, an' I had this mornin' to look for'ard to. An' now I'm goin' to take my time an' see for myself what kind of a wife Eben's be'n an' picked out."

      She was laughing richly all through the words, and Lydia, though she was blushing, liked the sound of it. She felt quite equal to the scrutiny. She knew the days of driving had given her a color, and she was not unconscious of her new blue waist. Then, too, Eben's hand was again on hers under the friendly cloth. Aunt Phebe looked, took off her glasses, pretended to wipe them, and looked again.

      "Well, Eben," said she judicially, "I'll say this for ye, you've done well."

      "Pretty good-lookin' old lady, I think myself," said Eben, with a proud carelessness. "Course she's nothin' to what my first wife was at her age; but then, nobody'd expect that kind o' luck twice. Aunt Phebe, here's my cup. You make it jest like the first, or you'll hear from me."

      Lydia drooped over her plate. If Eben had sought her hand then, she would have snatched it away from him. All the delicate instincts within her felt suddenly outraged. At last she acknowledged to herself, in a flash, how coarse-minded he must be to mingle the present with his sacred past. But she started and involuntarily looked up. The spinster cousin was giggling like a girl.

      "Now you've got back," she was saying to Eben. "Now I know it's you, sure enough. He took that up when he wa'n't hardly out o' pinafores," she said to Lydia.

      "What?" Lydia managed, through her anger at him.

      "Comparin' everything with his first wife. Where'd he get it, mother?"

      "Why," said aunt Phebe, "there was that old Simeon Spence that used to come round clock-mendin'. He was forever tellin' what his first wife used to do, an' Eben he ketched it up, an' then, when we laughed at him, he done it the more. Land o' love, Lyddy, you chokin'?"

      Lydia was sobbing and laughing together, and Eben turned in a panic from his talk with uncle Sim, to pound her back.

      "No, no," she kept saying. "I'm all right. No! no!"

      "Suthin' went the wrong way," commiserated aunt Phebe, when they were all in their places again and Lydia had wiped her eyes.

      "Yes," said Lydia joyously, as if choking were a very happy matter. "It went the wrong way. Eben, you pass aunt Phebe my cup."

      And while the coffee was coming she sought out Eben's hand again and turned to gaze at him with such tell-tale eyes that the spinster cousin, blushing a little, looked at once away, and wondered how it would seem to be so foolish and so fond.

A FLOWER OF APRIL

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