An Untrained Nurse

‘WROP it up warm, an’ set it by the stove, an’ feed it whenever it cries; an’ ef it’s ailin’ put a little mite of calomel on the tip of its tongue; an’ don’t take hit out. That’s the way to raise a baby.’ Thus spoke Mrs. Haw, looking up from her sewing.

Out on Hominy Creek she had been called Mistress Haw, for some shreds of the leisurely parlance of our forefathers may still be found among the Cove and Creek dwellers of the Southern mountains; but when she carried her husband, her children, and her household gods into Highville, she learned to know herself as Mrs. Haw.

She learned many other things that she had not dreamed of out on Hominy; became aware of them in silence, for the most part, with her shrewd, kind eyes narrowed to receive the new light, and her mouth compressed into a straight line. The inequalities of fortune are not obvious out on Hominy Creek, where there is not much fortune of any kind; but in Highville, which is a flourishing Health Resort, the County Seat, and an active business town besides, the good things of life are portioned out so unfairly that Mrs. Haw’s heart burned within her at the sight.

When she first came into Highville, she earned her living as a sick-nurse, untrained, but strong, sensible, and kind. Her patients did well, and loved her. They were chiefly babies and women; though to her the women were merely necessary adjuncts to the babies: she took good care of them, but she never allowed them to think themselves of first importance. To tell the truth, she had two passions: babies and books. Rabies were her business, a permanent source of revenue; books were her romance, the dream by which she lived. She talked much of babies, and little of books. Which she really loved the most, no one ever knew.

Trained nurses came along in time and took her work away from her, but she remained a tremendous authority on such matters‘all the days of her life,’ as the Catechism puts it. She took to mending and plain sewing in place of nursing, and turned out to have a natural gift for making women’s shirts; a ‘good cut,’ as we say. Such people are born, not made, like poets; and their livelihood is assured.

‘Wrop it up warm, an’ set it by the stove, an’ feed it whenever it cries,’ said Mrs. Haw. It was her battle-cry, her slogan; thus did she place herself with new customers.

‘Oh!’ said little Mrs. Denis, wideeyed, ‘but I thought going out —’

‘Ef hit’s a winter baby. That’s the best kind,’ said Mrs. Haw, inscrutably, ‘but it don’t holp no baby none to take hit out of doors.’

She scented her enemy, the manyheaded demon, Fresh Air.

‘Oh, yes!’ said Mrs. Denis, in acquiescence.

She did not care much, having no babies of her own, and she cared very much about pleasing Mrs. Haw, having been told she would work for no woman unless she liked her.

‘Yes, ma’am. You want a yoke, ur plain back? I reckon you’d better have a yoke, with your shoulders.’

‘What’s wrong with my shoulders?’ said Mrs. Denis, in alarm. In fact they had always been well-spoken of, but Mrs. Haw had a disconcerting plainness of speech; if you did not fit her shirts, she was apt to find fault with your figure.

‘They ain’t much out,’ admitted Mrs. Haw.

Her gray eyes twinkled behind her thick glasses. She liked Mrs. Denis; she was a pretty, soft little thing, born to depend, not to uphold, but her face looked as if bewildering responsibilities had suddenly been thrust upon her. Mrs. Haw knew the look; new-comers in Highville were apt to have it.

‘Mr. Denis looks a heap better than he did first time I saw him,’ she said casually.

Mrs. Denis grew quite pink with pleasure and interest.

‘It was New Year’s Day. He was walkin’ crost the Square — he looked mighty bad off. But now — he’s started right. Ef he was a woman he’d be about well, but a man —’ She stopped. She had not much opinion of men, but she had a tender respect for love’s young dream. ‘Jest you get a man to think he’s well, an’ he is.’

‘Are you a Christian Scientist, Mrs. Haw ?'

‘ No, ma’am, I’m a Methodist. That time I went North weth Mrs. Dent’s baby, an’ seen the ocean, I went to a ’Piscopal church weth Katie. (She’s Mrs. Dent’s mother’s maid. She’s a white woman.) That church would n’t never holp me none. I ’ve jest naturally got to rock when I sing. Mebbe hit’s ’cause I’ve rocked so many babies.’

‘Did you like the ocean, Mrs. Haw?’

‘No, ma’am.’ Mrs. Haw hesitated; she was moved to explain. ‘I could n’t see acrost it, no ways,’ said the mountain woman, used to vast prospects; ‘an’ that thing they call the tide — hit’s a lonesome thing, comin’ in, an’ comin’ in, an’ goin’ back, an’ goin’ back. I used to say, “You stop right there! Now stop! ” Hit never did. Katie used to laugh. An’ them ships! They say there’s babies born on ’em. I would n’t want to nurse none on a ship. I’d ruther have a nice stiddy mountain.’ She rose to go. ‘I reckon I’ve finished up fer to-day, ma’am. I’ve got to stop on my way home, an’ fit a lady. Well, I say a lady; she ain’t a lady, she’s a friend of mine.’

Mrs. Haw had a fine sense of social distinction; that was where her Southern bringing-up came in.

She rolled up her work, put on a shabby hat and coat, and looked about her. There were some books on a table; she looked at them hungrily, but she did not ask for one.

‘I’ll stop in an’ fit ’em some evenin’ next week, about five o’clock.’

The front door slammed behind her; again her sense of social distinction asserted itself; the kitchen door was used by the Negro servants, therefore she, being white, could not stoop to use it.

She turned from one street into another, walking quickly; the streets of Highville run up hill and down; follow them far enough and they climb mountains, or transform themselves into woodland trails. She looked hard at a man who was riding slowly by on an ambling mule; even in the thickening dusk could be discerned the easy grace with which he sat his mount. Mrs. Haw stopped and strained her eyes to see more clearly.

‘That you, Orton Nally?'

The man did not look, nor answer, nor check his mule.

‘What you doin’ in Highville?’

The mule slid by, shuffling its little feet rhythmically on the hard clay road; the rider drooped his head back until his face was hardly visible.

‘Keep away from me an’ mine! Keep away! Keep away!' shouted Mrs. Haw to the vanishing figure. She caught her breath. The savagery of many untamed generations surged in her blood; her eyes saw scarlet, her hand shut tightly on her bundle; a needle within pierced it deeply, but she did not feel the pain.

‘I reckon I could shool straight enough to hit him!’

The primeval savage sleeps at the bottom of every heart. In the mountain heart he sleeps lightly, and rouses to fury at a sound.

‘Ef he hurts Lilly — ef he hurts Lilly -!’

She laughed loudly in the darkness, a dreary cackle, without mirth. She was shivering and shaking like a sick animal.

‘ A pretty one I’d be to shoot a man! Cain’t hold my hand stiddy when I’m jest studyin’ ’bout hit. The men’s got the best of us. They don’t shake none when they shoot.’

She hurried on.

A pretty, half-grown girl hung about the door of Mrs. Haw’s little house, watching, watching up the street and down.

‘Watchin’ for me, Lilly?’ said Mrs. Haw, appearing suddenly out of the darkness, like a wandering ghost.

’Why, grandma! Yes, grandma! You’re all out of breath!'

‘I did n’t stop at Mistress Deems. I come right on home. Have you got supper ready fur the bo’ders?’

The girl whimpered.

‘I’ll get it. Don’t cry, Lilly. Come in. Don’t hang ’round the door.' She drew the girl forward into the light of the lamp. ‘Lilly! Has Orton Nally been here?’

The girl’s face flamed into color. ‘No, grandma! No, indeed!’

Mrs. Haw did not press the question; she let the child draw back into the shadow.

‘You’ll have to set the table, Lilly. I’ve got a heap of work to do to-night.’

‘Why, Mrs. Haw!' cried Mrs. Denis, with flattering surprise, ‘what are you doing with grandchildren! You’re too young!’

‘I was married when I was fo’teen. I don’t hold weth girls waitin’ the way they do now tell they’re seventeen ur eighteen. A girl that waits that-a-way ’s likely not to get a man at all,’ said Mrs. Haw.

Man in the abstract she hated. He was at the root of most of her troubles. Concrete man was the rightful lord of creation; not to secure him would be unbearable calamity.

‘ My daughters all married when they was fifteen. That time I went North weth Mrs. Dent’s baby, an’ seen the ocean, Katie told me girls up there did n’t marry tell they was thirty sometimes. I hed a grandson when I was thirty-one. Lilly’s fifteen. I’d like to see her married to a good man, that did n’t drink none, an’ hed a good trade. Not a mountain man.'

‘Don’t you think fifteen is rather young to marry?’

‘No, ma’am!’

Silence fell.

‘You might rip this un, Mrs. Denis, ma’am.'

Mrs. Denis’s head drooped over her work. It was a pretty and well-kept head of red gold. Mrs. Haw, looking at it over her spectacles, reflected upon its silkiness, reflected that Lilly’s head would look like that if she took better care of it, reflected, with a stir of anger, that Mrs. Denis was rich and Lilly was poor.

‘But I reckon Lilly’d be jest as noaccount ef she was rich,’ said Mrs. Haw to herself, with that bitter justice that lived at the back of her head, and came down upon her conclusions like a sharp knife, severing false from true, whether she willed it or not.

‘Your hair looks like it belonged to a year-old baby.’

Mrs. Denis raised her silky head quickly; her soft round face was puckered into anxious wrinkles; she looked like a child on the verge of a burst of tears.

‘Jack — Mr. Denis — had an awfully bad night last night,’ she said, suddenly; ‘he — it’s terribly discouraging.’

‘ He ’s obliged to have bad nights now and then,’ said Mrs. Haw, 4 but I reckon he don’t have as many as he did when he first come down.’

‘No, I don’t believe he does,’ said Mrs. Denis, cheering up immediately. ‘He does n’t! What a comfort you are, Mrs. Haw. How I wish you could always be here. That’s the way to look at it, is n’t it? Look on the bright side.’

‘Ef there’s a bright side to look on, yes, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Haw, thinking heavily of Lilly, and of Orton Nally.

‘Oh! there’s always a bright side,’ said the girl. ‘And though of course I worry awfully about Mr. Denis, I know he is better really. But it’s hard for him to be down here, where he has no incentive, and no stimulus, and no congenial society. He’s going North this spring for a little while, just to get in touch — to see some people who write. He feels that he needs it.’

‘Does Mr. Denis write?’

‘Oh, yes!’ said little Mrs. Denis, pluming herself visibly, like a little pigeon, ‘ he writes.’

‘ Books ? ’

‘Yes — that is —he’s written stories. He’s going to write books — splendid ones — soon.’

‘Books,’ said Mrs. Haw, reverently. ‘Books!’ She let her work lie untouched in her lap, she took off her spectacles, and held them in her hand: ‘Well’m, I ’ve had eight babies, an’ riz six of ’em. I kin do any kind of farm work — an’ I have. When we lived out on Hominy I wove all Mr. Haw’s clo’es, an’ all the children’s, an’ all mine, on grandma’s old loom. I’ve brung a heap of babies into the world without any doctor to holp me weth ’em — when I lived on Hominy; here in town all the women thinks they has to have a doctor—an’ you know Mrs. Denis, ma’am, of I kin make a pretty shirt—’ It sounded like an assertion of merit; it was really a humble offering of her all upon the altar of literature. Suddenly and unawares she had come upon its temple; reverently she trod its shining floor. ‘You don’t reckon hit’ll be bad for him, goin’ up into that cold north air? Hit’s mighty damp up there,’she said with anxiety.

A heavy step sounded outside, and she leaned forward to look at the young man who passed the door. She had taken no particular interest in him before; he was merely one of the many who were sent to Highville in search of health, and who recovered in its strong, sweet air, or did not recover, as the case might be. She had even resented him a little, because she had taken a fancy to his sweet-natured, pretty little wife, and looked upon him as an anxiety to her. Abstract Man, as Mrs. Haw sees him, is always an anxiety to his wife; he wishes to be; if he can accomplish his end in no other way, he falls ill.

‘Hit’s mighty damp up North,’ said Mrs. Haw.

“Oh, dear!’ sighed Mrs. Denis, instantly cast down, ‘what shall I do if he catches cold! But he wants to go.’

‘ I reckon he’d better go ef he wants to go. Hit won’t hurt him none, mos’ likely — ef he wants to do it,’ said Mrs. Haw, wise in the ways of Man. ‘I’ll fit this shirt now, Mrs. Denis, ma’am.’

When she rose to go, her glance fell again upon the table of books, with unmistakable longing.

‘ Are you fond of reading, Mrs. Haw ? ’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

' Do you have time —would you care to take one of these?’ said Mrs. Denis, with a flash of inspiration.

A gleam of joy stole into Mrs. Haw’s eyes. 4 Yes, ma’am! Thank you, ma’am! I certainly would. I’ll cover it weth paper, an’ take good keer of hit.’

‘ Which one will you take?’ said Mrs. Denis eagerly. Her cheeks were flushed with the pleasure of a kind action, her round face was puckered with smiles; she did so like to please people.

‘Is this un a cook-book?'

‘ Yeast? No, that’s an old, old novel. You’d like this better, I think.’ She held up a volume of futile fiction, modern, and much praised.

‘I’ll take this,’ said Mrs. Haw, doggedly.

She had opened the book haphazard in the middle, as a book-lover does, to taste its quality, and lo! the thoughts of her heart were there in print! Her gray eyes burned, as she read one fiery sentence after another; her lips moved, relishing the words.

‘I reckon the man that writ this has seen one-roomed mountain cabins.’

‘I don’t — think — he ever did,’ hesitated Mrs. Denis.

‘Yes, ma’am. He could n’t say what he does ef he had n’t. I’ve always been pore, but I’ve never had to live that-away, but I’ve seen it, all my life! An’ I’ve seen the harm of it. Hit ain’t their fault when they do wrong, hit ain’t their fault!’ The anger died out of her voice; in its place was a deep sadness. ‘Nor hit ain’t no use talkin’about the injestice of it—I cain’t change it, none. I’ve thought them things, but I never seen ’em writ in a book befo’. I reckon I can give you that time in June you wanted, Mrs. Denis,’ said Mrs. Haw monotonously, ‘I’ve been studyin’ about it, an’ I reckon I kin’ manage it.’

‘You’ve got nothing again’ John Gower, Lilly, except that he’s a decent, respectable man, that don’t drink none an’ don’t tell you all the time how pretty you are. Orton Nally jest naturally talks that-a-way to every woman he sees. He’d tell me I was a beauty, ef I’d let him.'

Lilly giggled.

Mrs. Haw smiled too, unresenting. She did not wonder that Lilly thought her unimaginably old and ugly; she thought it of herself, having begun the serious business of life at an early age.

‘He hears that kind of talk in saloons. John Gower’ll cross the street when he comes to a saloon, ruther than go near one.’

Lilly shrugged her shoulders.

‘You remember Orton Nally cain’t marry nobody, Lilly.’

‘ I don’t want to marry nobody. You hear that kind of talk in books, grandma, readin’ ’em like you do!’

‘Here comes John Gower!’

‘Let him come!’ said Lilly obdurately.

‘You kin take a walk weth him, Lilly, an’ carry him back to your Aunt Amanda’s to supper.’

Lilly shook her foolish head; but a lover is a lover, even though he be strictly temperate, and desirable, and approved by the family; and in a surprisingly short time she was dressed in her Sunday best, and walking off with John Gower, with the appearance, at least, of keen enjoyment.

Mrs. Haw had the house to herself, and she sat down by the window, snatched up a book, and in a moment had forgotten her surroundings, her troubles, and herself. Highville is a ragged town, of great distances; Mrs. Haw’s house was on its outskirts, little pine trees pressed against her garden fence, and wood thrushes sang to her in the early morning, or late in the June days; they were singing that Sunday afternoon, but Mrs. Haw did not hear them, being happily enclosed in the four walls of her book.

John Denis found the North as damp as Mrs. Haw could possibly have anticipated. He came home to fall ill, and be nursed back to health by an excellent trained nurse, named Worrilow; but no sooner was he convalescent than he fled her society, and demanded Mrs. Haw, and was never so placid or so well-pleased as when she sat in his room, and told him stories.

‘I wish you’d stop that infernal sewing, and just talk to me,’ he said one day.

‘I cain’t sit here weth my hands in my lap,’ said Mrs. Haw, with scant civility. But her tone was kinder than her words, and her smile was kinder than either. ‘Mrs. Denis is payin’ me fur makin’ her shirts, an’ I’m obliged to make ’em. Hit ain’t holpin’ you none to talk so much, Mr. Denis. I reckon I’ll have to tell you another story.’

Denis smiled feebly. He took great pleasure in Mrs. Haw’s stories. ‘That’s just what I want.’

Mrs. Haw nodded to her sewing, well-pleased; this was not the first convalescent who had hung upon the words of her fluent tongue — not by a good many!

‘I don’t guess I ever told you about the time they hung three men in the field over ’crost Caney Street. I could show you the place from the window, ef you was up — there’s housen on it now. I was twelve year old, an’ we was livin’ out on the other side of Bear Mountain, fo’teen mile west of Hominy. We started at sundown the night befo’, an’ walked all night. Pap brung us all that was big enough to walk that fur. He ’lowed we ought to see hit. He was a pore man, but he done what he could fur his children. Fore part of the night we was alone, but along about one o’clock in the mo’nin’ we begun to come on families frum this side the mountain. Hit was mighty dark along under the trees, but we had a lantern, an’ mos’all the families had ’em, ’count of the children strayin’ off an’ gettin’ los’ in the woods. The woods was bigger then, an’ blacker, an’ thicker, than they is now. Or mebbe I was littler. They seemed mighty black to me that night. Nobody said much. You don’t talk much in the woods at night. You jest naturally cain’t. An’ we walked an’ walked an’ walked — an’ walked, weth the lanterns swingin’ an’ the owls hootin’ back in the woods; an’ every now an’ then we’d hear steps side of the road, an’ some more folks would come out an’ follow along.’

As Mrs. Haw talked, she sewed, snapped her thread, and knotted it, but the thread of her narrative was unbroken.

‘Bear Mountain’s an awful long, long mountain. I thought we never would get down an’ out where we could see the stars. A little brother of mine was along — Roley. He was ten year old, an’ a curious kind of child, always tellin’ big stories about what he’d seen, an’ done, when he’d never done nothin’ but tote water from the spring all the mo’nin’. Seemed like he believed ’em, too. They was pretty stories: we children used to like to hear him tell ’em. Pap used to whup him fur lyin’ sometimes, but hit never changed him none, that I could see. He got it into his head that we was all goin’ down to Highville to hang him fur lyin’! I guess he had a hard walk, pore little boy! He did n’t ask no one — jest set his mind that-a-way. He mought have asked me, but he never did. He died that winter. He had a runnin’ in his leg. Nursin’ him was the first nursin’ I ever done. Pore little boy!’

Mrs. Haw took off her spectacles and wiped them slowly.

‘When we got down High ville way, all the roads was black weth people. Men rid in clear from Tennessee. An’ we did n’t see no hangin’ after all,’ she said, with a cheery cackle. ‘It was put earlier ’count of the crowds, an’ by the time we got into town, hit was all over. I never did get to see one. When I was young, I had to work too hard, an’ now — I’d ruther not, someway. Seem like them Gladiator Shows, when they killed the Christians. I read about one in a book.’

‘When do you do your reading? In the evenings, I suppose.’

Mrs. Haw laughed genially. ‘You reckon I’ve got nothin’ to do nighttimes but read! I reckon you mean night-time, when you say evenin’. I’ve got fo’ men bo’ders, Mr. Denis; an’ Mr. Haw, an’ Lilly, an’ Lilly’s two little brothers, to take keer of. I have a heap of work to do night-times — an’ I gen’lly carry some sewin’ home weth me.’

‘In the morning, perhaps, you get up early, and get in an hour or two at a book. Lots of people work before breakfast. One’s brain is fresher then.’

Again Mrs. Haw laughed, quite unrestrainedly this time! ‘My men gets their breakfasts at six. I don’t read none in the mo’nins.’

‘Then when?’ Denis persisted.

‘You write me a book, sir, an’ I’ll find time to read it, someway.’

Her reading hours were her secret; her own household did not know them.

‘ I wish I’d known this country then,’ Denis grumbled, meditating upon the triple hanging, and its effect upon the minds of the populace.

Mrs. Haw did not answer. She bent over her work; her shining needle flew. The young man watched it, hypnotized into drowsiness, if not into complete repose.

’I wish I’d had the luck to see the mountains before everything was civilized out of them,’he muttered, sleepily.

Mrs. Haw’s face looked gray and hard; her lips moved, though no sound came from them. ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord!’ The Christian spoke, but the savage lay beneath. ‘ Ef he hurts Lilly, I’ll shoot him down. She’s got no father nur mother to take keer of her — I ’ll shoot him down —’

But she knew very well that she could not shoot Orton Nally, no matter what he might do; that he was stronger and readier than she could possibly be, and that if it came to shooting, he could take care of himself, and she would go to the wall. Subtlety is woman’s best weapon, but Mrs. Haw was above all things direct. The cold wind of reason blew across her hot anger, and chilled it into something very like despair.

‘Hit’s time fur your milk, Mr. Denis, sir. You take it now, and you can get a little sleep — an’ then I’ll tell you some mo’ stories. Jest a little mite of sleep!’ she said, with tender patience.

He turned on his side, and fell asleep presently, and Mrs. Haw rocked and sewed and meditated, and set her troubles out in an orderly row, and looked them over. Her chair made a little creaking that would have roused the patient into wakeful wrath if any one else had done it, but the rocking of Mrs. Haw seemed an integral part of her, and as such was distinctive and soothing.

‘Hit ain’t no use reasonin’ weth a man like that, no use at all, nur cryin’; he’d be right pleased an’ happy ef he could see me cry —’ Her chair creaked a little louder, and lost its regular cadence. ‘Nur coaxin’—not an ugly old woman, like I am. Loolian don’t coax him none; she scolds him, an’ feeds him good — an’ she’s his wife — he’d jest run away from me! ’ She set her mouth firmly, until it looked like a thin line. ‘I’ll go up there, an’ do what I kin — some one’s got to go; an’ if anything happens—hit’s obliged to happen!’

The patient stirred uneasily in his sleep; all this suppressed emotion was disturbing the peaceful atmosphere of the room.

‘I’ve finished the shirts, an’ I’ve brung back the books, Mrs. Denis, ma’am; an’ I’m obliged to you fur lettin’ me have ’em.’

‘Did n’t you like The Circuit Rider?' said Mrs. Denis.

‘No, ma’am. I’ve seen a heap of Methodist preachers all my life; had ’em in the house when I lived on Hominy. I don’t need to read books about ’em. But that other was a pretty book. I reckon I could have made him more comfortable than that Torfrida did.’

4 Hereward? ’

‘ Yes, ma’am. No one’s obliged to be as uncomfortable in the woods as they was. She was n’t what you’d call a triflin’ woman either. Well, ’m, I ’m glad I’ve read ’em.’

‘Are n’t you coming next month?’ cried Mrs. Denis in dismay.

Mrs. Haw’s voice had a ring of finality. She had spoken as one might speak who takes an eternal farewell.

‘What will Mr. Denis do without you to talk to him!’

‘He’s right well now. An’ I’ve got some business to do up country.’

Mrs. Denis looked quickly into Mrs. Haw’s face, and looked quickly away again; emotional, unreasoning little people, who are eager to please, and troubled over many things, see sometimes when wiser folk are blind.

‘It’s disagreeable business!’

‘Hit ain’t pleasant,’ Mrs. Haw admitted. ‘Now don’t you get to frettin’ about him. He’s better than he was befo’ he got sick. Ef he wants to write books you let him; hit won’t hurt him none.’

’Don’t go up country,’ begged Mrs. Denis. ‘Oh! don’t go, Mrs. Haw. Let the business go—no matter what it is! ’

A gleam of pleasure stole athwart the gray calm of Mrs. Haw’s face, as a sun ray lightens for a moment the gloom of a boding sea.

‘Thank you, ma’am; but I reckon I ’ll have to go.’

' It seems to me a good deal of water has run under the bridges since we’ve seen Mrs. Haw,’ said Denis to his wife one day. ‘What has become of her, Helen? I want some more reminiscences.’

They were driving down the road that used to run for many miles along the rushing waters of the French Broad: a very old road that was once the stage road north and west into Tennessee; before that, a bridle path; before that, by the witness of tradition, an Indian trail. Trail or path of some sort doubtless it has always been, companioning the river through trackless wildernesses, fraught with danger and death; followed by fearful women, by trembling captives, by old age and defeat; followed, too, assuredly, by lovers, children, and the like, hopeful and happy. To-day no one follows it, for a big electric plant has dammed the river; the old roadhouses are torn down, and the old road is dead — drowned by the spreading flood.

Mrs. Denis gave an exultant chuckle. ‘She’s coming to-morrow,’ she said, like a child that joyfully produces a present that it has thought of all by itself; ‘I wrote her a post-card; I thought you’d like to see her again; and she wrote me a post-card, and said there had been illness in her house, but that she’d come to-morrow! I’m so glad! And she’ll say how well you look! ’

Mrs. Haw came through a summer thunder-storm the next morning, and sat down to her work by the window of the sewing-room, to an accompaniment of rolling thunder and lurid lightning that would have sent some women to a feather-bed. Mrs. Haw viewed it unmoved.

‘That was a bad storm we had early this morning,’ said Denis, an hour or two later, entering cautiously, as a man should enter a sewing-room.

‘Yes, sir. Don’t step on that lace edgin’, sir!’

‘Is the lightning always bright red down here, and does it always strike in one’s front yard?’

‘ Hit’s obliged to strike in somebody’s yard,’ said Mrs. Haw, aphoristically; ‘how’r you, sir?’

‘Fine!’

Mrs. Haw continued her work in silence.

‘How did you get on up-country? Mrs. Denis seemed to think you were having a bad time. What were you doing up there? Borning some more grandchildren?’

‘No, sir,’ said Mrs. Haw cheerily. ‘Not this time. I did n’t get to go up country after all. I was fixin’ to go a Wednesday, but the night befo’ a man got runned over by one of them automobiles, an’ they carried him into my house. Hit happened close by. An’ he stayed there tell he died. No, sir; hit was n’t the fault of the automobile. He’d been drinkin’ an’ he had n’t sense enough to get out of the way.’

‘Why did n’t you send him to the hospital?’

‘His wife’s kin of mine,’ said Mrs. Haw, simply. ‘She come down to nurse him, soon as she heard. They live way over in the blue. Hit took two days to get her here.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Mrs. Haw looked vexed. She tried to purge her speech of purely mountain idioms, but now and then one slipped in.

‘That means way, way off, where the mountains fold down into each other, an’ you cain’t see anything but the blue, ’cept mebbe a little curl of white smoke risin’ up. Loolian come as soon as she could, an’ she watched by him tell he died. He’s better dead. He was the han’somest man in the mountains, Orton Nally was, an’ I guess he was n’t fur from bein’ the worst. Seemed like he could n’t keep away from a pretty girl, an’ he drinked!’

‘He sounds interesting.’

‘He ain’t interestin’ now,’ said Mrs. Haw grimly, like a voice from a Dance of Death; ‘a man’s got to stay ‘live, ef he wants to be interestin’, anyways to a girl. My Lilly likes men mighty well, but she don’t like ’em none when they’re dead. I’m makin’ Lilly some pretty clothes,’ said Mrs. Haw, tentatively, as if she wished to be asked why.

She would have liked to tell Denis about her pretty Lilly, and about John Gower, and the things he would not do. We all have our own triumphs, and our own achievements; they may be small, but they are very big to us; we like to talk about them, and take our little wage of praise.

‘ I want her to have as much as other girls have,’ said Mrs. Haw. With a very little encouragement she would have unburdened her soul. ‘Hit’s a good thing fur a girl to get a good man, that don’t drink none, an’ don’t have no foolish talk, a stiddy man.’

‘The storm’s coming back, I think,’ said Denis.

Mrs. Haw looked out of the window; beneath it was a wonderful great prospect of river and foothills, and range upon range of blue peaks. Clouds were trooping up the defiles in long lines, and lifting from the highest summits into the sky above.

‘No, sir,’ said Mrs. Haw, setting her own affairs aside without resentment, ‘I don’t guess it’s comin’ back—I reckon you an’ Mrs. Denis kin go fur your drive, ef you want.’

She sat by the window, sewing steadily; beneath she heard the joyous voices of the Denises, making ready to start.

‘He’s well again,’ she reflected. She was a lonely soul, all the more that she was not often alone; and she held much converse with herself, like all such. ’They’ll be goin’ back North soon. Seems like nobody ever does stay here long. Well, I’m glad they kin go that way.’

In joy, not grief, that is; life, not death. Mrs. Haw might have been used to seeing people go by this time, people she had nursed and worked for, cheered through sad hours, and heartened up to go on; it was an old story to her. But she had a trick of growing fond of them, and when they went away she missed them; they forgot her; she knew that very well. It was her misfortune that she was a clever woman, and saw too much for her own good.

There was a good deal of talking going on under the window; the Denises were carrying books out of the house, and putting them in the back of the runabout, and covering them carefully from the possibility of mud stains.

‘I wonder where they’re takin’ all them books,’ said Mrs. Haw hungrily. ‘To somebody that has plenty of ’em, I reckon.’

Mrs. Denis slipped into the room, all smiles, and pink color, and eagerness.

‘What’s your number, Mrs. Haw? We are n’t quite sure.’

‘Fo’teen.’

‘Will any one be at home?’

‘Lilly’ll be there. Them shirts ain’t ready to go yit. I’ll take ’em when I go.’

‘It’s the books,’ said Mrs. Denis happily; ‘Mr. Denis thought there was no use packing so many, and he thought you might like to have them, and we thought we’d drive them over this morning. There, I’ve told you, and we meant it to be a surprise!’ said Mrs. Denis in deep regret.

Mrs. Haw watched her books drive off; she had never dreamed of owning so many, and such nice ones; it seemed ‘too good to be true,’ as we say in this vale of tears. The mountains were cloudless and blue, the day was freshwashed, and sweet with honeysuckle, and the smell of wet earth.

‘It’s turned out to be a pretty day,’ said Mrs. Haw, ‘an’ after all there’s a heap of good people in this world — ef it is a bad one!’