第42章 XVII(1)

A BRACE OF LOVERS

HAYING was over, and the close, sticky dog-days, too, and August was slipping into September. There had been plenty of rain all the season and the countryside was looking as fresh and green as an emerald. The hillsides were already clothed with a verdant growth of new grass and "The red pennons of the cardinal flowers Hung motionless upon their upright staves."

How they gleamed in the meadow grasses and along the brooksides like brilliant flecks of flame, giving a new beauty to the nosegays that Waitstill carried or sent to Mrs. Boynton every week.

To the eye of the casual observer, life in the two little villages by the river's brink went on as peacefully as ever, but there were subtle changes taking place nevertheless. Cephas Cole had "asked" the second time and again had been refused by Patty, so that even a very idiot for hopefulness could not urge his father to put another story on the ell.

"If it turns out to be Phoebe Day," thought Cephas dolefully, "two rooms is plenty good enough, an' I shan't block up the door that leads from the main part, neither, as I thought likely I s hould. If so be it's got to be Phoebe, not Patty, I shan't care whether mother troops out 'n' in or not." And Cephas dealt out rice and tea and coffee with so languid an air, and made such frequent mistakes in weighing the sugar, that he drew upon himself many a sharp rebuke from the Deacon.

"Of course I'd club him over the head with a salt fish twice a day under ord'nary circumstances," Cephas confided to his father with a valiant air that he never wore in Deacon Baxter's presence; "but I've got a reason, known to nobody but myself, for wantin' to stan' well with the old man for a spell longer. If ever I quit wantin' to stan' well with him, he'll get his comeuppance, short an sudden!"

"Speakin' o' standin' well with folks, Phil Perry's kind o' m akin' up to Patience Baxter, ain't he, Cephas?" asked Uncle Bart guardedly. "Mebbe you wouldn't notice it, hevin' no partic'lar int'rest, but your mother's kind o got the idee into her head lately, an' she's turrible far-sighted."

"I guess it's so!" Cephas responded gloomily. "It's nip an' tuck 'tween him an' Mark Wilson.

That girl draws 'em as molasses does flies! She does it 'thout liftin' a finger, too, no more 'n the molasses does. She just sets still an' IS! An' all the time she's nothin' but a flighty little red-headed spitfire that don't know a good husband when she sees one. The feller that gits her will live to regret it, that's my opinion! "And Cephas thought to himself: "Good Lord, don't I wish I was regrettin' it this very minute!"

"I s'pose a girl like Phoebe Day'd be consid'able less trouble to live with?" ventured Uncle Bart.

"I never could take any fancy to that tow hair o' hern! I like the color well enough when I'm peeling it off a corn cob, but I d on't like it on a girl's head," objected Cephas hypercritically.

"An' her eyes hain't got enough blue in 'em to be blue: they're jest like skim-milk. An' she keeps her mouth open a little mite all the time, jest as if there wa'n't no good draught through, an' she was a-tryin' to git air. An' 't was me that begun callin' h er 'Feeble Phoebe in school, an' the scholars'll never forgit it; they'd throw it up to me the whole 'durin' time if I should go to work an' keep company with her!"

"Mebbe they've forgot by this time," Uncle Bart responded hopefully; "though 't is an awful resk when you think o'Companion Pike! Samuel he was baptized and Samuel he continued to be, "till he married the Widder Bixby from Waterboro. Bein' as how there wa'n't nothin' partic'ly attractive 'bout him,--though he was as nice a feller as ever lived,--somebody asked her why she married him, an' she said her cat hed jest died an' she wanted a companion. The boys never let go o' that story! Samuel Pike he ceased to be thirty year ago, an' Companion Pike he's remained up to this instant minute!"

"He ain't lived up to his name much," remarked Cephas. "He's to home for his meals, but I guess his wife never sees him between times."

"If the cat hed lived mebbe she'd 'a' been better comp'ny on the whole," chuckled Uncle Bart. "Companion was allers kind o' dreamy an' absent-minded from a boy. I remember askin' him what his wife's Christian name was (she bein' a stranger to Riverboro) an' h e said he didn't know! Said he called her Mis' Bixby afore he married her an' Mis' Pike afterwards!"

"Well, there 's something turrible queer 'bout this marryin' b usiness," and Cephas drew a sigh from the heels of his boots.

"It seems's if a man hedn't no natcheral drawin' towards a girl with a good farm 'n' stock that was willin' to have him! Seems jest as if it set him ag'in' her somehow! And yet, if you've got to sing out o' the same book with a girl your whole lifetime, it does seem's if you'd ought to have a kind of a fancy for her at the start, anyhow!"

"You may feel dif'rent as time goes on, Cephas, an' come to see Feeble--I would say Phoebe--as your mother does. 'The best fire don't flare up the soonest,' you know." But old Uncle Bart saw that his son's heart was heavy and forbore to press the subject.

Annabel Franklin had returned to Boston after a month's visit and to her surprise had returned as disengaged as she came. Mark Wilson, thoroughly bored by her vacuities of mind, longed now for more intercourse with Patty Baxter, Patty, so gay and unexpected; s o lively to talk with, so piquing to the fancy, so skittish and difficult to manage, so temptingly pretty, with a beauty all her own, and never two days alike.

There were many lions in the way and these only added to the zest of pursuit. With all the other girls of the village opportunities multiplied, but he could scarcely get ten minutes alone with Patty. The Deacon's orders were absolute in regard to young men.