It was the afternoon of the wedding day, and the two mothers were sitting on the porch of their joint home, both in festal attire, and both in the state of pleasurable excitement that follows any great change, and that precludes an immediate return to the commonplace routine of daily life.

"I might just as well be sewin' or mendin'," said Mrs. Williams, "but it seems like Sunday or Christmas day, and I don't feel like settlin' down to anything."

"There's nothing like a weddin' for makin' you feel unsettled," said Mrs. Martin, as she smoothed down her black silk dress. "It'll be a long time before we get over this day."

"It was a pretty weddin', wasn't it?" said Mrs. Williams, "And I never saw a happier lookin' couple than Anna Belle and Henry. Most brides and grooms look more like scared rabbits than anything else, but Anna Belle and Henry were so happy they actually forgot to be scared. I reckon they think that married life's a smooth, straight road with flowers on both sides, just like that garden path. You and me have been over it, and we know better."

"They'll have their trials," smiled Mrs. Martin, "but if they love each other, they can stand whatever comes."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Williams, "love's like a rubber tire; it softens the jolts and carries you easy over the rough places in the road."

"Henry was the image of his father," said Mrs. Martin dreamily.

"I couldn't help thinkin' of myself when I looked at Anna Belle," said Mrs. Williams. "You may not believe it, but I was as slim as Anna Belle, when I was her age."

"I wish their fathers could have seen them," sighed Mrs. Martin.

Mrs. Williams leaned toward her companion. "Maybe they did," she said in a half whisper. "I'm no believer in table-walkin' and such as that, but many a time I've felt the dead just as near me as you are, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Henry's father and Anna Belle's father were at the weddin'."

"Every weddin' makes you think of your own weddin'," said Mrs. Martin timidly.

"So it does," a.s.sured Mrs. Williams, "and I was married just such a day as this. We'd set the fifteenth of May for our weddin', but Aunt Martha McDavid said May was an unlucky month, and so we changed it to the first of June."

"I was married in the fall," said Mrs. Martin placidly. "I remember one of my dresses was a plaid silk, green and brown and yellow, and the first time I put it on, Henry's father went out in the yard and pulled some leaves off the sugar maples, and laid 'em on my lap, and said they matched the colors of my dress. I pressed the leaves, and they're in my Bible to this day."

"I had a dark blue silk with a black satin stripe runnin' through it,"

confided Mrs. Williams, "and after I got through wearin' it, I lined a quilt with it, and it's on Anna Belle's bed now."

The two women were rocking gently to and fro; both were smiling faintly, and there was a retrospective look in their eyes. Memory, like a questing dove, was flying between the past and the present, bringing back now a leaf and now a flower plucked from the sh.o.r.es of old romance, and they were no longer the middle-aged mothers of married children, but young brides with life before them; and as they talked, more to themselves than to each other, with long intervals of silence, the afternoon waned, the sun was low, and the little garden lay in shadow.

"What a long day this has been!" exclaimed Mrs. Williams, rousing herself from a reverie. "Why, it seems to me I've lived a hundred years since I got up this mornin'."

"I'd better see about makin' the fire and gettin' a cup of tea," said Mrs. Martin. "I can tell by the shadow of that maple tree, that it's near supper time." Then hesitatingly, as if it were a doubtful point of etiquette, "It looks like foolishness to have two fires. Mine's already laid; suppose you eat supper with me to-night."

"I'll be glad to," responded Mrs. Williams heartily, "for I haven't half got my things in order yet." She followed Mrs. Martin to the kitchen, and together they set the table and waited for the kettle to boil. Mrs.

Martin was pleased to find that Mrs. Williams preferred black tea to green, and while she was slicing the bread, Mrs. Williams disappeared for a moment, returning with something wrapped in a napkin. She unfolded it, disclosing huge slices of wedding cake, white cake, golden cake, and spice cake dark and fragrant.

"There!" she said complacently. "You and me were too fl.u.s.tered to eat much at the weddin', but maybe we'll enjoy a piece of this cake now."

Silently and abstractedly the two women ate the simple meal. Now and then Mrs. Martin looked across the table at the vacant place where Henry had always sat, and as Mrs. Williams ate wedding cake, her thoughts were with the daughter whose face for twenty years had smiled at her across the little square leaf-table in the old home; also, she had a queer, uneasy feeling, as if she had spent the afternoon with her friend and should have gone home before supper. After the dishes were washed, they seated themselves again on the cool, shadowy porch. Both were feeling the depression that follows an emotional strain; besides, it was night, the time when the heart throws off the smothering cares of the day and cries aloud for its own. It was Mrs. Williams who finally broke the silence.

"While I think of it," she said, dropping her voice to a confidential whisper, "I want to tell you what I heard Job Andrews and Sam Moreman say when they brought my trunk in this mornin'. They didn't know I could hear 'em, and they were laughin' and whisperin' as they set the trunk down on the porch, and Job says: 'Some of these days these two women are goin' to have a rippet that you can hear from one end of this town to the other,' and Sam says: 'Yes, they'll be dissolvin' partnership in less than two months.'"

"Did you ever!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Martin.

"I thought once I'd go out and say somethin' to 'em," pursued Mrs.

Williams, "but I didn't. I just shut my mouth tight, and I made a solemn resolution right there that there'd never be any rippet if I could help it, and if there was any, I'd take care that those men never heard of it, There's nothin' in the world men enjoy so much as seein'

women fall out and quarrel, and I don't intend to furnish 'em with that sort o' pleasure."

"Nor I," said Mrs. Martin warmly. "I don't see why two women can't live in peace under the same roof. For my part, quarrelin' comes hard with me. It's not Christian, and it's not ladylike."

"Well, if I felt inclined to quarrel," said Mrs. Williams, "the thought of Sam and Job would be enough to keep me from it, and if that's not enough, there's the thought of Anna Belle and Henry. They can't be happy unless we get along well together, and we mustn't do anything to spoil their happiness."

Mrs. Martin made an a.s.senting murmur, and another silence fell between them, Both were conscious of the strangeness of their new relation. To Mrs. Martin it seemed that Mrs. Williams was her guest, and she was vaguely wondering if it would be polite to suggest that it was time to go to bed. Mrs. Williams rocked to and fro, and the squeak of the old chair mingled with the shrill notes of the crickets. Presently she stopped rocking and heaved a deep sigh.

"It's curious," she said, "how grown folks never get over bein'

children. When I was a little girl I used to go out to the country to visit my Aunt Mary Meadows. I'd get along all right durin' the day, but when night come, and the frogs and the katydids begun to holler, I'd think about home and wish I was there; and when Aunt Mary put me to bed and carried the light away, I'd bury my face in the pillow and cry myself to sleep. And just now, when I heard that katydid up yonder in the old locust tree, I felt just like I used to feel at Aunt Mary's."

Her voice quivered on the last word, but once more she laughed bravely.

A flash of comprehension crossed Mary Martin's brain. She leaned over and laid her hand on the other woman's arm.

"You're homesick," she said, with a note of deep sympathy in her voice.

"All day I've been thinkin' about it, and I've come to the conclusion that you've got the hardest part of this matter. Henry and Anna Belle owe more to you than they do to me. We've both given up a child, but you've given up your home, too, and that's a hard thing to do at your time of life." At her time of life! The words were like a spur to a jaded horse. Mrs. Williams straightened her shoulders, raised her head, and laughed again.

"Shuh!" she said carelessly, "changin' your house ain't any more than changin' your dress. I ain't so far gone in years yet that I have to stick in the same old place to keep from dyin'. But I reckon I'm like that spring branch that used to run through the field back of Father's house. It was always overflowin' and ruinin' a part o' the crop, and one fall Father went to work and turned it out of its course into a rocky old pasture where it couldn't do any harm. I was just a little child, but I remember how sorry I felt for that little stream runnin' along between the new banks, and I used to wonder if it wasn't homesick for the old course, and if it didn't miss the purple flags and the willers and cat-tails that used to grow alongside of it; but just let me get a good night's rest and my things all straightened out, and I'll soon get used to the new banks and be as much at home as you are."

She rose heavily from her chair. "I believe I'll go to bed now," she said briskly. "Movin' 's no light work, and we're both tired."

"If you should get sick in the night or need anything," said Mrs.

Martin, following her into the house, "don't fail to call me."

"I'm goin' to sleep the minute my head hits the pillow and sleep till it's time to get up," replied Mrs. Williams, "and you do the same. Good night!"

She closed the door and stood for a few seconds in the darkness. Then she groped her way to the table and lighted her lamp. Its cheerful radiance flooded every part of the little room, and showed each familiar piece of furniture in its new surroundings. Yes, there was the high chest of drawers that Grandfather Means had made from the wood of a cherry tree on the old home place; there was the colonial sewing-table, and the splint-bottomed rocker, the old bookcase, and all the rest of the belongings that she cherished because they belonged to "the family."

But how strange her bra.s.s candlesticks looked on that mantel! It was not _her_ mantel, and the wall-paper was not hers. Her wall-paper was gray with purple lilacs all over it, and this was pink and green and white!

And the windows and doors were not in their right places. Ah! the hold of Place and Custom! The memories and a.s.sociations of a lifetime twined themselves around her heart closer and closer, and the hand of Change seemed to be tearing at every root and tendril. Pale and trembling she sank into a chair, and the same tears she had shed sixty years ago, the tears of a homesick child, fell over her wrinkled cheeks, while in her brain one thought repeated itself with a terrifying emphasis: "_I can't get used to it. I can't get used to it._"

But the sound of her own sobs put a stop to her grief. She brushed the tears away with the back of her hand and glanced toward the door. The other woman across the hall must not know her weakness. She rose, walked forlornly to a side window, and parting the curtains, looked fearfully out. Why, where was the lilac bush and the Lombardy poplar and the box-wood hedge? Again the hand tore at her heart; she peered bewilderedly into the night. Alas! the stream turned from its course cannot at once forget the old channel and the old banks. Again the tears came, but as she wiped them away, a fresh wind arose, parting the light clouds that lay in the western sky and showing a crescent moon and near it the evening star. Like a message from heaven came a memory that dried her tears and swept away the homesick longing. Twenty-five years ago she had looked at the new moon on her wedding night, and this was Anna Belle's wedding night--her daughter's wedding night! Fairer than moon or star, the face of the young bride seemed to look into hers; she felt the girl's clinging arms around her neck and heard the fervent whisper: "_You are the very best mother in the whole wide world._"

She lifted her eyes once more, not to the moon or the star, but to Something beyond them.

"O G.o.d!" she whispered brokenly, "it's harder than I thought it would be; but for my child's sake I can stand it, and anyway, I'm glad I'm not a millstone or a stumblin'-block."

"ONE TASTE OF THE OLD TIME"

"There is no organic disease whatever," said the doctor. "The trouble is purely mental. No, I don't mean that," he corrected hastily, as he saw the look of dismay on David Maynor's face. "Your wife is not losing her mind. Nothing of that sort. Indeed, I take her to be a woman of unusually sound mentality. But, evidently there is some trouble preying on her mind and producing these nervous symptoms. The prescription I am leaving will palliate these, but it remains for you to find out what the trouble is and remove it, if you can. There are some cases where doctors are powerless, and this, I think, is one of them." He reached for his hat and bowing with professional courtesy turned to leave.

"How much do I owe you?" said David Maynor.

The blunt question was like a sentry's challenge, and the doctor paused with his hand on the k.n.o.b of the door.

"Ah--never mind about that now. A bill will be sent you at the end of the month." His tone and manner implied that this was too trivial a matter to be mentioned.

But David Maynor's hand was in his pocket, and he was drawing forth his new seal-leather purse.