Then, as if recalling his mind from painful reflections, the elder man spoke again. “But it ain’t no use a-worryin’ over what can’t be helped. We was both fond o’ old Bess, an’ I know you feel as bad about losin’ her as I do. But I’m a-goin’ to give her a decent burial, sich as a Christian ought to have; fur, while the old mare wasn’t no perfessor, she lived the life, an’ that’s more ’n most perfessors do. Yes, sir, I’m a-goin’ to have her buried: no glue-man fur me. I reckon you’re a-wantin’ to know how old Bess dyin’ an’ yore a-savin’ ’Lizabeth could run into each other in my mind; but they did. Fur, as I see you standin’ there a-holdin’ the little girl, it come to me sudden like, ‘Freddie’s grown now, an’ he’ll be havin’ a girl of his own purty soon, ef he ain’t got one now. Mebbe it’ll be ’Lizabeth.’ ” The old man paused for a moment; his eyes rested on the boy’s fiery face. “Tut, tut,” he resumed, “you ain’t ashamed, air you? Well, what air you a-gittin’ so red fur? Havin’ a girl ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, or skeered about neither. Most people have girls one time or another, an’ I don’t know of nothin’ that’ll make a boy or a young man go straighter than to know that his girl’s eyes air upon him. Don’t be ashamed at all.”
Fred still blushed, but he felt better, and his face lightened over the kindly words.
“I didn’t finish tellin’ you, though, what I started on. I got to thinkin’ yesterday about my young days, when I had a girl, an’ how I used to ride back an’ forth on the pore old horse right into this town to see her; an’ as I drove home from the picnic I talked to the old nag about it, an’ she whisked her tail an’ laid back her ears, jest like she remembered it all. It was on old Bess that I rode away from my girl’s house after her first ‘no’ to me, an’ it seemed then that the animal sympathised with me, fur she drooped along an’ held down her head jest like I was a-doin’. Many a time after that we rode off that way together, fur the girl was set in her ways, an’ though she confessed to a hankerin’ fur me, she wanted to be independent. I think her father put the idee into her head, fur he was a hard man, an’ she was his all, his wife bein’ dead. After a while we stopped talkin’ about the matter, an’ I jest went an’ come as a friend. I only popped the question once more, an’ that was when her father died an’ she was left all alone.
“It was a summer day, warm an’ cheerful like this, only it was evenin’, an’ we was a-settin’ out on her front garden walk. She was a-knittin’, an’ I was a-whippin’ the groun’ with a switch that I had brought along to touch Bess up with now an’ then. I had hitched her out front, an’ she kep’ a-turnin’ her eyes over the fence as ef she was as anxious as I was, an’ that was mighty anxious. Fin’ly I got the question out, an’ the girl went all red in a minute: she had been jest a purty pink before. Her knittin’ fell in her lap. Fust she started to answer, then she stopped an’ her eyes filled up. I seen she was a-weak’nin’, so I thought I’d push the matter. ‘Come,’ says I, gentle like, an’ edgin’ near up to her, ‘give me my answer. I been waitin’ a long time fur a yes.’ With that she grabbed knittin’, apron, an’ all, an’ put ’em to her eyes an’ rushed into the house. I knowed she’d gone in to have a good cry an’ settle her nerves, fur that’s the way all women-folks does: so I knowed it was no use to bother her until it was done. So I walks out to the fence, an’, throwin’ an arm over old Bess’s back, I told her all about it, jest as I’m a-tellin’ you, she a-lookin’ at me with her big meltin’ eyes an’ whinnyin’ soft like.
“After a little while the girl come out. She was herself ag’in, but there was a look in her face that turned my heart stone-cold. Her voice sounded kind o’ sharp as she said, ‘ ’Liphalet, I’ve been a-thinkin’ over what you said. I’m only a woman, an’ I come purty near bein’ a weak one; but I’m all right now. I don’t mind tellin’ you that ef I was ever goin’ to marry, you’d be my choice, but I ain’t a-goin’ to have my father’s sperrit a-thinkin’ that I took advantage of his death to marry you. Goodbye, ’Liphalet.’ She held out her hand to me, an’ I took it. ‘Come an’ see me sometimes,’ she said. I couldn’t answer, so I went out and got on old Bess an’ we jogged away. It was an awful disappointment, but I thought I would wait an’ let my girl come aroun’, fur sometimes they do—in fact mostly; but she has never give me a sign to make me think that she has. That was twenty years ago, an’ I’ve been waitin’ faithful ever sence. But it seems like she was different from most women, an’ ’specially good on holdin’ out. People that was babies then have growed up an’ married. An’ now the old companion that has been with me through all
