A Landless Farmer: In Two Parts. Part I

IT was late in a lovely day of early spring, the first warm Sunday of the year, when people who had been housed all winter came out to church, like flies creeping out of their cracks to crawl about a little in the sunshine. It seemed as if winter, the stern old king, had suddenly died, and as if the successor to the throne were a tender-hearted young princess, and everybody felt a cheerful sense of comparative liberty and freedom. The frogs were lifting up their voices in all the swamps, having discovered all at once that they were thawed out, and that it was time to assert themselves. A faint tinge of greenness suddenly appeared on the much-abused and weather-beaten grass by the roadsides, and the willows were covered with a mist of greenish gold. The air was fragrant, and so warm that it was almost summer-like; but the elderly people shook their heads, as they greeted each other gravely in the meeting-house yard, and said it was fine weather overhead, or spoke of the day reproachfully as a weather-breeder. There seemed to be a general dislike to giving unqualified praise to this Sunday weather, which was sure to be like one of the sweet spring flowers that surprise us because they bloom so early, and grieve us because they are so quick to fade.

After church was over in the afternoon, two or three men were spending an idle hour on a little bridge where the main highway of Wyland crossed Cranberry brook; a small stream enough in summer, when it could only provide water sufficient for the refreshment of an occasional horse or dog belonging to some stray traveler. It was apt to dry up altogether just when it was needed most; but now the swamp which it drained was running over with water, and sent down a miniature flood, that bit at the banks and clutched at the roots and tufts of rushes as if it wished to hold itself back. It had piled already a barricade of leaves and sticks and yellow foam against the feeble fence that crossed it at the roadside, and the posts, which were already rotted away, were leaning over and working to and fro, as if they had hard work to stand the strain, and might fall with a great splash and go down stream with the mossy rails and the sticks and yellow foam any minute.

The water had risen to within a short distance of the floor of the bridge, and the three men stood watching it with great interest. Two of them, who had come from church, had found the other standing there. He owned the pasture through which the brook ran on its way to the river; but on that side of the road the ground fell off, so there was a small cascade; and his own stone walls, which stopped at the edge of this, were in no danger. He wore his every-day clothes, but the other men were in their Sunday best.

“ Warm for the time o’ year, ain’t it?” asked one of these, taking off his hat, and giving his forehead a rub with his coat sleeve. “ I wore my overcoat that I have been wearing this winter to meeting this morning, and the heft of it was more than a load of hay. I come off without it this afternoon. The folks said I should get my death o’ cold, and I do’ know but they was right, but I wa’n’t going to swelter as I did in the forenoon for nobody.”

“ ’T is warm,” said Ezra Allen, who was without his own waistcoat, and who whittled a deliciously smooth and soft bit of pine with a keen-edged knife, in ideal Yankee fashion. “ I’ve been looking to see that old fence of Uncle Jenkins’s topple over; the stream’s most as high as I ever see it. I should n’t wonder if it come over the bridge, if this weather holds.”

“ Crambry Brook’s b’en over this bridge more times ’n’ you’ve got lingers and toes, Ezra,” said the third man, scornfully. “Guess you’ve forgot. When I was a boy, ’t was customary for it to go over the bridge every spring, and I do’ know but I’ve seen it in the fall rains as well. Parker Jenkins come near getting drowned here once, you know.”

“You’re thinking of the little old bridge that used to be over it when we was boys ; ’t was two or three foot lower than this. The road used to be all under water in them days; I know that well as anybody. I was n’t referring to the bridge. I said the brook was high as I ever see it. Ef you had that little bridge here before they histed up the road, I guess you’d find it well wet down.”

“ Don’t seem to me as if the brooks run so high as they used,” suggested Henry Wallis, mildly. “ They say it ’s because the country’s been stripped of its growth so. Cutting the pines all off lets the sun get to the springs, and the ground dries right up. I can’t say I understand it myself, but they’ve got an argument for everything nowadays.”

“ There ain’t so much snow as there used to be when we was boys,” said Ezra Allen. “ I never see no such drifts anywhere about as used to be round the old school-house ; we used to make caves in ’em that you could stand right up in, and have lots o’ clear room overhead, too.”

“You ’re considerable taller than you was in them days, Ezry,” said Asa Parsons. “ That makes some difference ; ” and the three neighbors laughed together, as if it were a great joke.

All through the parish were little knots of people like this, gossiping together on their unfrequented front steps, or before the barn doors, where happy fowls fluffed their feathers and scratched the wet ground, or quawked and strutted to and fro. There was a good deal of social visiting going on, and as the three men stood together on the bridge, which was a favorite abiding place in summer, being not far from several farmhouses, they spoke to one neighbor after another, as he or she went along in the muddiest possible wagons. As for the horses, they were steaming as if they had come from the races, and looked as if they wished, like their masters, to be relieved of their winter coats.

“ Seems to me everybody was out today,” said Ezra Allen, who was a rosyfaced, pleasant - looking man of about forty. “ I do’ know when I’ve missed a Sunday before; ” and he went on clipping little white chips from his stick, which was dwindling away slowly.

The other men waited for a few moments, until they became certain that he would say no more of his own accord; and then Asa Parsons boldly inquired what had kept him at home from meeting, and was told that he had watched the night before with old Mr. Jerry Jenkins.

“ I want to know if you did,” said Wallis, with much concern. “ I’d no idea that he was so bad off as to have watchers. And I should think his own folks might take care of him amongst themselves. He ain’t been sick enough to tucker them out, seems to me.”

“ I guess I’m as near to being his own folks as anybody, if setting by him counts for anything,” said Ezra, with a good deal of feeling. “I always thought everything of Uncle Jerry. He’s done me more kind turns than anybody else ever did, and he’s a good-hearted man, if ever there was one. He’s none of your sharpers, but he’s got the good will of everybody that knows him, ’less it’s his own children.”

The three friends were leaning against the rail of the bridge, all in a row. Ezra whittled fiercely for a minute; the hands of his companions were plunged deep into their already sagging pockets. They looked at him eagerly, for they knew instinctively that he was going to say something more. He shut his jackknife with a loud snap, and turned and threw the bit of white pine into the noisy, rushing brook. It was only a second before it had gone under the bridge, to show itself white and light on the brown water, and lift itself as if for a leap on the rounded edge of the little fall, and disappear. Ezra’s forced discretion seemed to have been thrown away with it.

“ Sereny Nudd found out, somehow or ’nother, before I come away this morning, that I mistrusted about things, and she come meachin’ round, wanting me not to tell; but all I told her was that I would n’t have done it, if I was her, if I was going to be ashamed of it. I don’t know when anything has riled me up so. Says I, right to her face and eyes, I’m mortified to death to think I am any relation to such folks as you be, and she shut the door right in my face, and I cleared out. I’ve been sorry all day I said it ; not on account of her, but now she’s mad she won’t let me go near the old gentleman, if she can help it, and I might have looked after him a good deal.”

“What’s to pay ? ” asked Wallis and Parsons, eagerly ; it was some time since anything had happened to them which promised to be of so much interest as this. Ezra Allen was not easily excited, and was an uncommonly peaceable man under ordinary circumstances.

“ Well, if I must say it, they’ve prevailed upon that poor old man to sign away his property, and I call it a burning shame.”

“ How long ago ? ” and the hearers looked at Ezra with startled countenances. Yet there could be seen a flicker of satisfaction at this beginning of his story.

“ Some time in the winter,” answered Ezra. “ The poor creatur’ has been laid up, you know, a good deal of the time, and there come a day when he was summoned to probate court, on account of that trust money he’s got for the Foxwell child’n. You know he’s guardeen for ’em, and it’s been a sight o’ trouble to him. He might have sent word to the judge that he wa’n’t able to come and see to it, and’t would ha’ done just as well three months hence, being a form of law he had to go through; but what does them plants o’ grace do but work him all up, and tell him a lot o’ stuff an’ nonsense, until he was ready to do whatever they said. He put the power into Aaron Nudd’s hands to go over and tend to the Foxwell matter; and then they went at him again (he told me all about it in the night, though I have had an inkling of it for some time past), and they told him ’t want likely he’d ever get about again, and he was too old to look after business, and go hither and yon about the country. All he wanted was his livin’, they told him, and he’d better give them the care of things and save himself all he could, and make himself comfortable the rest of his days. Sereny Nudd is dreadful fair-spoken when she gives her mind to it, and uncle, he’s somehow or ’nother always had a great respect for her judgment, and been kind of ’fraid of her into the bargain ; and he was sick and weak, and they bothered him about to death, till he signed off at last, just to get a little peace. Mary Lyddy Bryan was there at the time, a mournin' and complainin’, same as she always is. Sereny won’t have her about, generally, but she got her to help then, and between ’em they won him over. Mary Lyddy is always a dwellin’ on being left a widow with no means, and a gre’t family to fetch up, and her father’s always had to help her. Both of her boys is big enough to be doing for themselves, and ought to be put on to farms, or to some trades ; but they ’ll never do a stroke of work if they can help it.”

“Did they draw up the papers just as they wanted ’em, and make the old sir sign ’em ? ” asked Parsons. “ I should n’t ha’ thought he ’d been fool enough.”

“ Nor I, neither,” replied Ezra, who was in the flood tide of successful narration ; “ but we know, all of us, that their father ain’t what he used to be, and he was a sick man at the time. They put it to him this way : that he would have everything he wanted, same ’s if ’t was his own, and that he should have his say about everything just the same, — ‘t was only to save him trouble of the care of things,—and the way Sereny fixed it was abominable. She got him, first of all, to give Mary Lyddy her place to Harlow’s Mills, where she lives, out and out, ‘ because,’ says she, ‘ it may smarten up the boys, and give them some ambition, if they feel it ’s their own.’ Mary Lyddy always was kind of wanting, and she never see through it that Sereny was getting double what she was, she was so pleased about getting her place in her own right. Uncle, he told me he did n’t want to do anything about the bank stock, and, to tell the truth, he always meant the farm for Parker; but the girls set to so about him that there wa’n’t no use. Sereny said if ever her father wanted to change his mind he could do it, and make out new papers.”

“ After he’d gone and give it to her, it wa’n’t his to give,” growled Asa Parsons. " Did n’t he know that? ”

“ Well, I can tell you be’s been sick ever since be realized what he’d done,” said Ezra. “ He said last night that it had been gnawing at his conscience that it wa’n’t fair to Parker or to Mary Lyddy, neither. I stuck up for Parker, but I told him Mary Lyddy would n’t be any better off if she had a million ;

and Sereny wa’n’t far from the truth when she said he’d always been doing for her. But as for Parker, he kl done well enough if he had n't been nagged to death. I know he drank more ’n was good for him, and hated farm work ; but there was sights o’ good things about him, and he wa’n’t no common fool. They’ve dinned it into the old man’s ears that he must be dead, they ain’t heard from him for so long; but Sereny never would write to him, and the old man’s eyesight’s failed him of late. He cried like a child as he lay there in bed, last night. He got hold of my hand and gripped it, and said lie did n’t know, till he got Mary Lyddy to read him the paper all through, once when Sereny was out to a neighbor’s, that they’d worded it so’s to leave Parker out. It gives Mary Lyddy her place, and a piece of woodland beside, that comes from her mother’s folks ; and everything else — this farm, and the bank stock and everything,— to Sereny. She’s got as much as three thousand dollars more than her half,—grasping creatur’s both on ’em, she and Aaron Nudd is, and they’ve got a young one that’s going to be worse ’n either of ’em. I thought last night that the sooner poor old uncle was laid away, down in the buryiug-ground, the better ’t would be for him. Like’s not they ’ll never trouble themselves to set up a stone for him ; but I ’ll see to it myself, sure as the world, if they don’t show him respect, — taking away his rights, kind as he’s always been, and a good neighbor. His only fault has been that he was too lavish. There ain’t much the matter with him that I can see, except lie’s distressed, and seemed to feel he was broke in his mind, and there was nothing to look forward to. They’ve moved him out of the room where lie always slept into a back bed-room, where there ain't room to swing a cat, and no chance for a fire. I like to have froze to death. I set up in my overcoat all night, for ’t was chillier than you’d suppose before such a mild day. He wa’n’t warm enough along towards morning, and I scouted round till I got some blankets, — for there was n’t nothing over him but old quilted spreads. Sereny come in in the morning, mad as fire any way, because it seems she heard us talking in the night; but when she see them blankets, she like to have died, and asked why I did n’t come to her it’ I wanted more bedclothes, — ’t was too bad to spill medicines all over the best she had.

‘ There ain’t a spot on ’em, nor a brack in ’em,’ said I, real pleasant, though I could ha’ bit her head off. ' I remember I was with your mother when she bought ’em ; ’t was one of the last times she was ever over to the mills. I happened to be into Harlow’s shop when she was selecting them, — she got them very cheap. I told our folks what a bargain they was for the quality ; not that I pretend to be a judge of such things, but the women thought they did n’t need them.’ I just spoke of it to Sereny, so she’d see I knew they were none of her buying; and I said, right before her, ' The best ain’t too good for you, uncle ’ ” —

“ Well,” said Henry Wallis prudently, “ I never thought I should like to take up with Sereny Nudd, for better for worse ; but she may do well by her father, after all. Old folks has been known to be difficult, but she ain’t done right so far as we can see.”

“ Done right ! ” exclaimed Asa Parsons. It’s a burning shame, and I hope she’ll be met with. That’s what was going on one day last winter, when I saw that sneaking Josh Hayden riding home with Aaron Nudd. He’s a lawyer, — what there is of him,—and I suppose they got him over to do the business. I heard he’d deeded Mary Lyddy her place.”

“I don’t want to think of it,” said Ezra, disgustedly, “but it follows me about the whole time. I suppose I could have got out to meeting to-day, but it would have been more than I could stand to see Nudd and Sereny parade up the broad aisle. I wa’n’t so beat out that I could n’t have gone ; one night’s watching won’t use me up ! ”

The friends now separated, for the air was growing cold and damp. Asa Parsons mentioned that his overcoat would n’t do him any harm if he had it then, and he and Wallis went away together, while Ezra turned toward the other direction.

“ Suppose you ’ll be out to townmeeting,” Wallis called after him. It was fairly amazing that nobody should have spoken about the great day, anticipations of which were in every man’s mind, to a greater or less degree. Ezra Allen had not been without his hopes of running for selectman,— to tell the truth, he had looked forward all the week before to furthering his cause among his neighbors by a friendly word in season on Sunday ; but his uncle’s wrongs had driven his own political interests quite out of his head. He walked slowly home in the fast-gathering spring chilliness, the noise of the brook growing fainter and fainter. He suffered a slight reaction from his enthusiasm. and wished he had not spoken so warmly against his cousins. “ Mary Lyddy’s a poor dragging creatur’,” he said to himself; “and as for Sereny, she’s near, and set in her own way, but she may treat the old gentleman well, for shame’s sake. I don't know but I was hasty, but I don’t care if I was ; it wa’n’t the right thing for her to do; and then, there’s Parker.” By way of balancing any harm he might have done, he held his peace in his own household, and refrained from beguiling the tediousness of a Sunday evening by introducing this most interesting subject of conversation. He had a way of keeping things to himself at times, which his wife found most provoking ; but he was possessed of that uncharacteristic trait of many reticent people, of telling his secrets generously and even recklessly, if he once was forced to break through the first barrier of reserve.

The next morning was clear and not cold, but the warmth and revivifying influence of the day before was not to be felt. It was commonplace New England spring weather, and had a relationship to the melting of snow and the lingering of winter which was most unconsoling. A large number of persons had taken violent colds, and the frogs preserved a discreet silence. Asa Parsons wore not only his overcoat to townmeeting, but a woolen comforter round his throat as well; and he sneezed from time to time, angrily, as if it were a note of disapproval and contempt. There was a grand quarrel over the laying out of a new piece of road, and it was at first found very difficult to choose the town officers. There was a monotonous repetition of polling the house, and when Ezra Allen lost, at last, the coveted position of selectman, he had become so angry with some of his opponents, and so tired with the noisy war, that the glory of the occasion was very much tarnished. It was over at four o’clock, and nobody had had any dinner, except a slight refreshment of wilted russet apples and very watery and sour cider, which could be bought at abominable prices over the tailboard of one of the wagons which were fastened in long rows to the fences near the old meeting-house, which had been given over to governmental purposes.

Aaron Nudd was by no means a favorite among his townsfolk. He was very stingy, and had saved considerable money, for which it was supposed Serena Jenkins had married him. He was of the opposite party in politics to Ezra Allen, and he had been the opposing and successful candidate for the office which Ezra had lost. Aaron’s wagon was next but one, and the two men unfastened their horses sulkily, without looking at each other. Ezra went home prepared to believe any report of cruelty or injustice on the part of his uncle’s children, and full of the intention to tell the story of their trickery in his own household. But he was not even to have this pleasure on that unlucky day. His wife asked him reproachfully, as he entered, why he had said nothing of what everybody had been talking about who went by the house, and which would have been no story at all without his own report (already much magnified) of the meanness and knavery of Serena Nudd.

The next morning Ezra resumed his business of wheelwright, from which he had taken a two days’ vacation ; but the excitement had been a good deal of a strain upon him and he worked without much enthusiasm for a few hours, and about eleven o’clock laid down his tools altogether. The spoke-shave was so dull that it needed grinding, and there was nobody to turn the grindstone, and his head ached a little. He did not feel inclined to start out upon a new piece of work, and, taking a disgusted look around the shop at the disjointed limbs of various old and new vehicles, he threw off his apron, and went to the house, which was only a few rods distant along the road. Outside the shop door were stacked some dozens of wheels in various stages of decay and decrepitude, and two or three old wagon-bodies and chaise-tops were resting on the ground in most forlorn condition, as if they had been relentlessly exposed to all the winter weather. The wood-work of one new farm cart was set up on trestles, and had received its first coat of paint; but that was the only sign of any progress of the art that was carried on within. One would think, from the outward appearance of a wheelwright’s shop, that it was also a repository of worn-out carriages of every description. The trade is apparently never carried on without much useless rubbish, unless one may venture the suggestion that it is necessary to have a collection of specimens showing the advances and effects of various diseases of wheels, as surgeons are furnished forth with anatomical cabinets. On the seat of an old wagon there was perched a large rag doll, and when Ezra saw it he smiled, for the first time that morning. He was very fond of his little girl, to whom the doll belonged.

He pushed open the kitchen door with some faint thrills of pleasure, for a great whiff of a well-known odor blew out through the half-opened window which he had just passed. His wife was frying doughnuts, and he did not notice at first, for the smoke and steam obscured the atmosphere, that some one was sitting at the other side of the room.

“Just in time, ain’t I ? ” said Ezra, cheerfully; then, to his great disgust and confusion, he saw that the guest was his cousin. “ Is that you, Sereny ? ” he asked, in quite another tone.

“Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Nudd, snappishly, “ and I should think you’d be ashamed to look me in the face, Ezra Allen. You’ve been and done the best you could to take away my good name, and I don’t see what harm I ever done you nor yours ; ” and she began to cry in a most obnoxious fashion.

Ezra gave himself an angry twitch and went over to the window, where he stood with his back to the company, and looked longingly at the safe harbor of the shop which he had just left. His wife, who was a fearful soul and who hated a quarrel, escaped with her colander full of doughnuts to the recesses of the pantry, from whence she stole a glance now and then at the others, like a distressed mouse which had doubts about venturing out of its hole. Mrs. Nudd sniffed and sobbed, and wiped her not very wet eyes with her handkerchief again and again ; but still Ezra did not speak, and nothing could be more aggravating.

“Enoch Foster said, this morning,” she remarked, in a broken voice, “ that he supposed you was put out about the election, and Aaron’s getting in ahead of you. But I wa’n’t going to hear my own first cousin spoken of no such way, and I said that had n’t nothing to do with it ; you was too straightfor’ard a man. I knew you was hasty to speak, but there never was nothing mean about you, with all your faults; and I explained it as best I could, for I’m sure I don’t know no other reason. Poor old father’s mind is broke more than folks think, who comes in and sees him for a visit; and he’s got set upon our having got away his property from him. ’T was all his own set-out to deed it to us now in his life-time. He got kind of worried and confused a spell ago, and seemed to want to he rid of the care of it; and we made the change to gratify him. Aaron said he would n’t have no such goings-on, and that he did n’t want the farm nohow. He’s been desiring for a long spell to move to Harlow’s Mills and go into the shoe factory ; he could have had a first-rate chance any time in the boxing room, but we seemed to be pinned right down where we was, on father’s account.”

“ You need n’t have drove off Parker, then,” grumbled Ezra; but though Mrs. Allen heard him in the pantry, and shook for fear, Mrs. Nudd went on complacently : —

“ I'm sure we’ve always done the best we could by our folks, and by the neighbors. We ain’t had the means to he free-handed, for we never knew what was our own and what was n’t. One day father ’d he real arbitrary, and gather up whatever there was, even the butter money, that anybody’d think I might have a right to ; and next thing, he would n’t want to be consulted about anything. Aaron went to him one day about a bunch o’ laths, when he was going to alter the hen-coop, and father give it to him right an’ left, because he bothered him about it. He refused him the money, and said Aaron had made enough off from the place, and he should think he might attend to a job of that size himself.”

Ezra gave a sympathetic chuckle, and his cousin wished she had left out this illustration. “ I only spoke of it because some days father would have grieved hisself to death if he had n’t been told something that was half the importance,” she explained, in a higher key than ever. “ If you had to summer and winter him I guess you’d find out. He ain’t so easy-going and pleasant as folks seem to think. I know it ain’t right to talk so about my own father, that’s failed from what he used to be, but I ’ve got to stand up for myself, if my own relations won't stand up for me ; ” and at this point she cried again, more sorrowfully than before. “ I do have a hard time,” she said, in conclusion : “ father to please ; and Mary Lyddy a-dwellin’ on her trials, and tellin’ her complaints, and wantin’ to borrow everything I 've got ; and Aaron a-fussin’ and discontented, and talking about going West; and Parker, he spent about all the ready money he could tease out of father. I wonder the place ain’t all mortgaged, and I dare say we shall find it is. Some days, I wish I was laid in my grave, for I sha’n’t get no rest this side of it.”

Ezra’s wife, in the pantry, was ready to cry, also, by the time she heard the end of this touching appeal, and she did not see how her husband could be so stony-hearted. She wished he would say something, and knocked two pans together for a signal, and then was dreadfully shocked by what she had done. She was not very fond of Serena Nudd, and could talk angrily about her, behind her back, at any time; but being a weak little soul, and anxious to avoid contention, when there was any danger of getting a blow herself, she was ready, being also a woman, to take her complaining visitor’s part. But Ezra shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and fumbled a button which was at the back of his collar, and which, at that opportune moment, came off and dropped on the floor. “ I guess you ’ll have to set a stitch in this, if you will, Susan,” he said, with well-feigned indifference ; and Susan came obediently out from among the pots and pans, very shamefaced and meek. The button had rolled almost to Mrs. Nudd’s feet, and when Ezra looked for it unsuccessfully, she stooped and picked it up, and handed it to his wife with a heavy sigh, and then rose to take leave.

“ I shall be ready any time to watch with the old gentleman, if he needs it, or even thinks he does,” remarked Ezra, as if he had heard nothing of what his cousin Serena had said ; and she did not know how to answer him, though usually she was equal to the occasion. She went away in doubt whether she had won a great victory, or had been defeated ; and she took the plate of doughnuts which Susan humbly offered in the old gentleman’s behalf, hardly knowing what it was, she felt so unlike herself, all of a sudden. But she “ came to ” before she was out of sight of the house, and though she hated Ezra worse than ever, she ate one of the doughnuts with uncommon relish, and put another in her pocket.

The spring days lengthened and grew into summer, and the excitement which attended the knowledge of the transfer of old Mr. Jenkins’s property died slowly away. He looked so wilted and changed by his illness of the winter that it was by no means difficult for the town’s-people to believe that his mind had become as much enfeebled as his body. As for his nearest neighbors, they saw him rarely, for he was too lame to make the short journey to their houses ; and in the early summer business of the farms, nobody found much time to go visiting Serena Nudd, or her most unpopular husband. He was a sly-looking, faded-out little man, of no attractions, and a sneaking manner which disgusted the persons he sought most eagerly to please. It had been thought that he would favor some projects about the new road, which he frowned upon directly he was in office; and that angered the parties who were most concerned, and there grew steadily a feeling of shame and regret that he should have won so easily his prominent position in town affairs. He paid the taxes on the farm with unusual promptness, and the treasurer took notice that he had crossed out Mr. Jenkins’s name from the tax-bill and inserted his own in its place. There was a good deal of sympathy felt for the old man, because he had not deserved such a miserable son-in-law. People hoped that he was treated well, but it was taken for granted, in those few weeks, that the poor old farmer was fast breaking up, and, under the circumstances, nobody could wish him to live long, since it would only involve the greater discomforts of old age, and a continued suffering of one sort and another. As for his daughter Serena, she was making great bids for friendship, and was showing herself both generous and neighborly, in a way that much surprised her acquaintances. She spoke with great concern of her father’s failing health, and some persons began to say she was good-hearted, and what a pity it was that she should have thrown herself away on such a man as Aaron Nudd. She drove old Mr. Jenkins to church one hot Sunday, when Aaron was reported to he kept at home by the expected swarming from a hive of bees; and it was certainly very kind, the way in which she helped him down out of the high wagon, and along the broad aisle to his pew. He looked round the church as pleased as a child, and seemed to enjoy the unusual opportunity of being among his friends and neighbors. The older people watched him affectionately, — he was younger than several who were there,—and many of the

younger members of the congregation expected him to betray in some way his shattered wits. But he seemed to be in full possession of his faculties as far as any one could decide at that time ; and when Serena ostentatiously found his place in a hymn-book, and offered it to him, he shook his head at her in great perplexity, and proceeded to search for the right page in his own copy of Watts’ and Select Hymns, which was of large type, and for years had been ready to his hand in the corner of the pew. “I ’m all right, if it was n’t for my lameness,” he told a half dozen of the friends who crowded about him. “ I can get about a good deal better than the folks think I can, too ; but Sereny keeps right after me,” he added, in a lower voice to Ezra Allen, who had been more pleased than anybody to see his uncle in his accustomed seat, and who indulged a hope that now he was about again he would take things into his own hands. But the poor man stumbled on the meetinghouse steps that very Sunday, and gave himself a bad strain, and passed many a long and lonely day afterward in his dark, close bedroom, in that summer weather. Out-of-doors the birds sang, and the grass grew and grew, until it waved in the wind and was furrowed like the sea. The old farmer worried and fretted about the crops, and could not imagine how the fields got on without his oversight and care. He was always calling Aaron, or the man who had been engaged to help him, and demanding strict account of the potatoes and corn and beans. He had worked day in and day out on his land, until that summer, and he was sure everything must be going to wreck and ruin without him. Aaron evaded some of his questions, he thought, and treated him like a child. If it had not been for his lameness, he would have risen in wrath from his bed, and have dispersed the whole family, like marauding chickens. Even Ezra Allen was not attentive, and this was hard to understand, though the frequent breaking of farm tools and the wear and tear of the vehicles of the town gave him more than enough to do, while he had his own farming to look after beside.

Serena grew less and less amiable, but she was what she and her neighbors called a regular driver, and she had a hard fight to get through with her everyday work. If her father demanded a long explanation of the reasons that had led to the selling of a cow, she was by no means ready to satisfy him, and to stop in the midst of everything to answer his restless, eager questions by quieting accounts of the circumstances; and as for the man who had come several times to make the bargain, he was kept out of the old farmer’s hearing altogether. At last, in a desperate moment, Mr. Jenkins, like a distressed New England Lear, said that as soon as he was well enough he should go to stay for a while with his other daughter; for Mary Lyddy was always civil spoken to him, and was always pleased to see him, if other people were not. “It will be a first-rate thing to get rid of him through haying,” Serena told her lord and master that night. “I’m thankful it was his own proposal; ” and then they talked over the question of her father’s prompt removal to another scene of uselessness.

The next morning but one, Serena put her head inside the old man’s door, and said she guessed he had better get out into the fresh air that day. Aaron was coming right in to help him. This was good news, for Mr. Jenkins had urged his daughter to believe that there was no need of his lying in bed any longer, while she had insisted that she was following the doctor’s orders, and that if he stirred before the proper time he would only bring fresh disasters upon himself and his family. He found himself weak and stiif when he tried to move about, but such was his delight at being again his own master that he soon felt uncommonly strong and energetic, and sat down at the breakfast-table in the kitchen with a look of proud satisfaction.

“ I’m going to be in first-rate trim for haying,” he announced gravely. Aaron had swallowed his breakfast as nearly whole as possible, and had departed ; and Serena was already clattering at the dishes.

“ This is prime corn-cake,” said the farmer. “ I declare, Sereny, it tastes like it used to, — just like what your mother used to make.”

“It always tastes alike to me,” responded Mrs. Nudd, in a not unkindly tone. “ You ’re getting to be notional.” Serena was not celebrated for her skill in cookery, and this compliment had touched her tenderly.

“ Ain’t it a good while since we have had a nice cabbage?” asked Mr. Jenkins, presently. “ I suppose, though, they ’re about gone. I declare, how the weeks fly by ! It don’t seem but a fortnight since we were getting ’em in, in the fall of the year.”

“ For mercy sake ! ” said Serena. “I believe you are losing your faculties! The idea of cabbages keeping through haying! You might as well wish for some of the Thanksgiving pies. There ! I do the best I can to suit you, but it’s hard for one pair o’ hands to do everything. I did expect to have help in haying time, but Aaron says he can’t afford it, now he’s got the whole farm to lug.”

“He’s got the whole farm to help him, at any rate,” said Mr. Jenkins, blazing up into something like his youthful spirit. “ He was always crying poor, and wheedling round, and you was, too, till you got the farm, and now you ’re worse off than you was before. I ’ve always made an honest living, and stood well in the town, and I’ve brought up my children, and kept my fences and buildings in good order. I won’t have such talk from you nor Aaron Nudd neither.” But Serena had flown, and the old man might have relieved his mind by more just accusations without causing trouble, for there was nobody within hearing. The kitchen was hot, and the late June light was flaring in at the windows and door; it promised to be a very hot day. Mr. Jenkins felt a little tired and weak ; he wished he had not said so much, and told himself again the familiar and unwelcome truth that he had had his day. He looked about the room, which did not seem natural, for some reason or other. “ Sereny ! ” he suddenly shouted. “ What’s become of my chist o’ drawers, — my desk ? My papers is all in it. I hope you haven’t got them into a mess;” and he looked around him again, puzzled and miserable. There was a noise of the pounding and creaking caused by a rolling-pin in the great pantry, and presently Serena said that he used it very little, and it was considerably in the way, and an old furniture dealer had come along and offered a good price for it, and she bad sold it. She needed a new sewing-machine, and she did n’t suppose he would care. She always wanted that place for her sewing-machine, right between the windows, where there was a good light.

“I am going to learn you that I won’t be pulled about by the nose in this way another day; ” and Mr. Jenkins’s daughter did not remember that she had ever seen her father in such a rage before. “ You can tell Aaron to hunt up that man, and get my piece o’ furniture back; 't was my father’s before me, and it has stood in this kitchen a hundred years. I don’t care what you want, nor what you don't want, nor nothing about your sewing-machine. You just go and get that secretary back, or it 'LL he the worse for you. 'I don’t see as you’ve any call to act as if I was dead, right before my face. It’s a hard thing for a man o my years to see another master over his own house, and live to see himself forgotten ; ” and the poor old creature, whose pleasure at being about the house again was so cruelly spoiled, shook with anger, and meant to walk out-of-doors indignantly ; but his strength suddenly failed, and he leaned back in his chair again. Serena had nothing further to say, and the knocking and rolling still continued. She was making a tough company of dried-apple pies for the family sustenance in the haying season. The kitchen looked strangely empty without its one handsome and heavy piece of furniture, whose dark wood and great dull brass handles had somehow given a nobler character to the room, which was the usual gathering place of the family. In Serena’s mother’s day the bat-handles had always been well polished, and had many an evening reflected the brightness of the roaring great chimney-place fire. A little later in the morning, the farmer asked his daughter to fetch him the papers which had been kept carefully in the quaint corners and pigeon-holes. She feared to disobey, and for hours the old man sat drearily unfolding and poring over the small basketful of worn papers which held his history and his few business records. There was a curl which his wife had cut from the head of their little child who had died, and there was a piece of the Charter Oak at Hartford, and a bit of California gold that his brother had sent home in the early days of the gold-diggings stored away with the rest, — the old man’s few treasures and playthings. They were huddled together in miserable confusion, though he had always known where to put his hand on each, when they were in their places.

Sarah Orne Jewett.