“Oh, now, don’t you trouble yoreself, Miss Hester: me an’ Freddie air a-goin’ to git along all right. We ain’t a-goin’ to freeze, air we, Freddie, boy? Ah, not by a long sight; not ef Uncle ’Liph knows hisself.”
All the time the genial man was talking, he was tucking the lap-robe snugly about the child and making him comfortable. Then he clucked to the old mare, and they rattled away.
There was a faraway look in Miss Prime’s eyes as she watched them till they turned the corner and were out of sight. “I never did see sich a man as ’Liphalet Hodges. Why, a body’d think that he’d been married an’ raised a whole houseful o’ childern. He’s worse ’n a old hen. An’ it’s marvellous the way Frederick took to him. Everybody calls the child Freddie. I must learn to call him that: it will make him feel more homelike, though it does sound foolish.”
She went on with her work, but it was interrupted every now and then by strange fits of abstraction and revery, an unusual thing for this bustling and practical spinster. But then there are few of us but have had our hopes and dreams, and it would be unfair to think that Miss Hester was an exception. For once she had broken through her own discipline, and in her own kitchen was spending precious moments in dreams, and all because a man and a child had rattled away in a rickety buggy.
Chapter V
“Goodness gracious, Mis’ Smith,” exclaimed Mrs. Martin, rushing excitedly into the house of her next-door neighbour, “you’d ought to seen what I seen jest now.”
“Do tell, Mis’ Martin! What on airth was it?”
“Oh, I’m shore you’d never guess in the wide, wide world.”
“An’ I’m jest as shore that I ain’t a-goin’ to pester my head tryin’ to: so go on an’ tell me what it was.”
“Lawsy me! what next’ll happen, an’ what does things mean, anyhow?”
“I can’t tell you. Fur my part, I ain’t heerd what ‘things’ air yit.” Mrs. Smith was getting angry.
“My! Mis’ Smith, don’t git so impatient. Give me time to git my breath: it’ll be enough, when I do tell you, to take away yore breath, jest like it did mine.”
“Sallie Martin, you do beat all fur keepin’ a body on the hooks.”
“T ain’t my fault, Mis’ Smith. I declare I’m too astonished to speak. You know I was a-standin’ in my window, not a-thinkin’ nor expectin’ nothin’, jest like any person would, you know—”
“Yes, yes; go on.”
“I was jest a-lookin’ down the street, careless, when who should I see drive up to Miss Prime’s door, an’ hitch his hoss an’ go in, but Brother ’Liphalet Hodges!”
“Well, sakes alive, Sallie Martin, I hope you ain’t a-considerin’ that strange. Why, you could ’a’ seen that very same sight any time these fifteen years.”
“But wait a minute till I tell you. I ain’t done yit, by no means. The strange part ain’t come. I thought I’d jest wait at the window and see how long Brother Hodges would stay: not that it was any o’ my bus’ness, of course, or that I wanted to be a spyin’ on anybody, but sorter fur—fur cur’osity, you know.”
“Cert’n’y,” said Mrs. Smith, feelingly. She could sympathise with such a sentiment.
“Well, after a while he come out a-smilin’ as pleasant as a basket o’ chips; an’ I like to fell through the winder, fur he was a-leadin’ by the hand—who do you suppose?”
“I ain’t got a mortal idea who,” said Mrs. Smith, “unless it was Miss Hester, an’ they’re married at last.”
“No, indeed, ’t wa’n’t her. It was that little Brent boy that his mother died the other day.”
“Sallie Martin, what air you a-tellin’ me?”
“It’s the gospel truth, Melviny Smith, as shore as I’m a-settin’ here. Now what does it mean?”
“The good Lord only knows. Leadin’ that little Brent boy? Ef it wasn’t you a-settin’ there tellin’ me this, Mis’ Martin, I wouldn’t believe it. You don’t suppose Hodges has took him to raise, do you?”
“How in the name of mercy is he goin’ to raise any child, when there ain’t no women folks about his house ’ceptin’ old Marier, an’ she so blind an’ rheumaticky that she kin sca’cely git about?”
“Well, what’s he a-doin’ with the child, then?”
“That’s jest what I’m a-goin’ to find out. I’m a-goin’ down to Miss Prime’s. Len’ me yore shawl, Melviny.”
“You ain’t never goin’ to dare to ask her, air you?”
“You jest trust me to find things out without givin’ myself away. I won’t never let her know what I want right out, but I’ll talk it out o’ her.”
“What a woman you air, Sallie Martin!” said Mrs. Smith, admiringly. “But do hurry back an’ tell me what she says: I’m jest dyin’ to know.”
“I’ll be back in little or no time, because I can’t stay, nohow.”
Mrs. Martin threw the borrowed shawl over her head and set off down the street. She and her friend were not dwellers on the mean street, and so they could pretend to so nearly an equal social footing with Miss Prime as to admit of an occasional neighbourly call.
Through the window Miss Prime saw her visitor approaching, and a grim smile curved the corners of her mouth. “Comin’ fur news,” muttered the spinster. “She’ll git all she wants before she goes.” But there was no trace of suspicion in her manner as she opened the door at Mrs. Martin’s rap.
“Hey oh, Miss Hester, busy as usual, I see.”
“Yes, indeed. People that try to do their dooty ain’t got much time fur rest in this world.”
“No, indeed; it’s dig, dig, dig, and work, work, work.”
“Take off yore shawl an’ set down, Sallie. It’s a wonder you don’t take yore death o’ cold or git plum full o’ neuralgy, a-runnin’ around in this weather with nothin’ but a shawl over yore head.”
“La, Miss Hester, they say that worthless people’s hard
