The cap'n did it absently and was soothed by the process. Then Miss Letty laid the shortened pieces together in a workmanlike way, and they blazed afresh.

"What you goin' to do with your things?" asked the cap'n, pointing a broad and expressive thumb about the place.

"Sell 'em off. That's what Ellery wrote. He says I could have an auction mebbe a week 'fore Thanksgivin',--that's about now,--an' then when he an' Mary come we could all go over to cousin Liza's to stay, an' start for Chicago from there. Seems if 'twas all complete."

The cap'n was staring at her.

"You ain't goin' to sell off your things without ay or no?" he inquired.

"Don't ye prize 'em--the table you've eat off of an' chairs you've set in sence you were little?"

Miss Letty winced, and then recovered herself.

"Yes," she said, "I do prize 'em. But it seems if they'd got to go."

"Why don't ye take 'em with ye?"

"I couldn't do that, Oliver. Ellery has got his home furnished all complete--oak chamber sets an' I dunno what all. There wouldn't be no room for my old sticks."

The cap'n meditated.

"Letty," said he at length, "if there was anybody you ever set by after your own father an' mother, 'twas my wife Mary."

"Yes," said Letty, with one of her warmly earnest looks. "Mary an' I was always a good deal to one another."

"Well, do you know what she said to me once? 'Twas in her last sickness.

She was tracin' back over old times, that year you an' I was together so much, goin' to singin'-school an' all. You had a good voice, Letty--voice like a bird. You recollect that year, don't ye?"

"Yes," said Letty. Her voice trembled a little. "I recollect."

"That was the spring Mary kinder broke down an' went into a decline, an' you journeyed off to Dill River, an' made that long visit. An' when you come back, Mary an' I was engaged. Well, I'm gettin' ahead of my story. What Mary said was, 'Oliver,' says she, 'you don't know half how good Letty is. n.o.body knows but me. It's her own fault,' says she. 'She gives up too much, an' it makes the rest of us selfish.'"

"Did she say that?" asked Letty. She was awakened to a vivid recognition of something beyond the outer significance of the words. Then she seemed to lay her momentary emotion aside, as if it were something she could cover out of sight. She laughed a little. "Well," she said, "I guess I don't give up much nowadays. I ain't got so very much to give."

Cap'n Oliver rose and carefully arranged the fire as if there would be no one to do it after he was gone. Miss Letty loved that little custom.

It seemed a kind of special service, and often, after he had done it and taken his leave, she went to bed earlier than she had intended because, when his fire had burned out, she could not bear to rearrange it.

"Well," said he, "you bear it in mind, what Mary said. Sometimes you give up too much. You've gi'n up all your life, an' now you're goin' to give up to Ellery an' Mary. You think twice, Letty, that's all I say.

Think twice."

He shook hands with her gravely, according to their habit, and she heard his steps along the frozen lane. Then she opened the door softly a crack--this was old custom, too--that she might hear them farther. This time she was sure she actually knew when he turned into the road. She went back to the room and stood for a moment, her hand resting on the table, looking at the orderly fire and then at the chair which seemed to belong more to him than to her father. The cat got up from the lounge where, as she knew perfectly well, she had to content herself when Cap'n Oliver came, stretched, and walked over to the chair as if to a.s.sert her ownership. She was gathering her muscles for the easy leap when Miss Letty pounced upon her, gently yet with an involuntary decision.

"Don't you get up there, puss," she said jealously. "Do you think you've got to have a share in everything that's goin'?"

Then she laughed at herself in a gentle shame, lifted puss into the seat of desire, and stroked her ruffled dignity, and still laughing, in that indulgent way, sat down to see the fire out before she went to bed.

The next day Miss Letty set about cleaning her house, the actual first step toward leaving it; and suddenly, as she worked, at a moment she could never identify, it came over her that things which had been hers by such long usage that they were as unconsidered as her hand that wrought upon them, were to be hers no more. Then, as she dusted and rubbed, she stopped from time to time, to regard the rooms and their furnishings musingly and wonder if she should remember every smallest touch of their homely charm. She hoped she should at least remember.

All the week she did not see Cap'n Oliver. He was over at the Pinelands, she understood, making his married sister a little visit, as he always did in the fall of the year. If she thought it a little hard that he should be away the last week her home was to wear its accustomed face, she did not say so, even to herself. It seemed to her a poor habit to wish for what was obviously not to be, and all by herself she set upon the day for the sale of her goods and sent for the auctioneer to come.

An auction was a great event throughout the countryside. It ordinarily happened in the spring, as if people had taken all winter to get used to parting with their possessions; and then wagons of every sort came from whatever region the county paper had reached, and families brought their lunches in b.u.t.ter-boxes and went about scrutinizing the household gear that was to come under the hammer, glad at last to know what the house walls had really held; or they visited with their neighbors in little groups. But this was a day of fall sunshine and drifting leaves. Miss Letty, standing at an upper window looking out on her pear tree, the leaves leathery brown, felt a twitching of the lips. She gazed farther over her domain, and it seemed to her that it had never been so pleasant before, so mellowed and softened by the last light of the year. She knew there were neighbors in the yard below, and could not bring herself to glance at them. A line of horses stood there, and, she was sure, all the way up the lane, and she remembered that was the way they had stood when her mother was buried.

Then some one laughed out, in a way she knew, and she looked down and saw Cap'n Oliver. He was staring up at her window, as he answered a neighbor's greeting, and he gave a little oblique nod at her, and stumped along up the path. At once she recalled herself to the day, and went downstairs to meet him. It seemed very simple and plain now he had come.

The neighbors standing in the entry stood aside to let her pa.s.s, but she could scarcely notice them. It began to seem as if she must reach Cap'n Oliver, and then all would be well. The cap'n was in vigorous condition.

His face looked ruddier, and he was shaking her hand and saying, as if she had endowed him with her state of mind:--

"Soon be over, Letty, soon be over. Don't you give it a thought."

"No," said Miss Letty, choking, "I won't. I won't give it a thought."

But at that moment Hiram Jackson, who knew everything and was fervidly anxious to be the earliest herald, came stammering out his eagerness to tell.

"Say, Miss Letty. Say! you can't have no auction. You won't have no auctioneer. Old Blaisdell's wife's sister's dead, down to East Branch, an' he's gone."

Miss Letty, breathless, looked at the cap'n. "Well, there!" she said. It was in her mind that now she might not need to have the auction at all; and again she wondered, since she must have it, how she could ever make up her mind to it again.

"Oh, dear!" she breathed. "I'm sorry."

The cap'n was frowning at her, only because he was so deep in thought.

He threw up his head a little, then, bluffly, as if he had reached a clearer decision he meant to follow out.

"Not a word, Letty," said he. "Now don't you speak a word. I'm goin' to auction 'em off myself."

She stared at him, her lips apart, in protest.

"Why, Oliver," she said, "you ain't an auctioneer."

"Well, I shall be after this bout. Now you come straight into the sittin'-room an' set down in the corner underneath the ostrich egg, where I can see you good an' plain. An' if I come to anything you want to bid in, you hold up your finger, an' I'll knock it down to you. You understand, don't ye, Letty?"

It was hard to realize that she did, she looked so like a frightened little animal, turning her head this way and that, as if she longed for leaves to cover her.

"You understand, Letty, don't ye?" the cap'n was asking with great gentleness; and because she saw at last some sign of distress in his face also, she quieted, in a dutiful fashion, and nodded at him.

"Yes," she said, "I'll be where you can see me. But I sha'n't bid nothin' in. I don't prize 'em 'specially more'n I prize everything together. If I can give up an' go out West, I guess I can get along without my furniture. Shouldn't you think so?"

She went hurrying away across the hall and into the sitting-room, and Cap'n Oliver, his head bent a little, stroked his chin and watched her.

Then he followed, making his way through the friendly crowd in hall and sitting-room, and mounted the dry-goods box prepared for the auctioneer.

He looked about him and smiled a little, partly because people were gazing at him sympathetically, and partly over his own embarra.s.sing plight. For he was a shy man. n.o.body knew it but himself, and he was afraid that after to-day everybody would know.

"Well, neighbors," said he, "I feel as if I was runnin' for President or hog-reeve or somethin', or goin' to speak in meetin'. But I ain't. I'm goin' to auction off Letty Lamson's things, an' I ain't been to an auction myself sence I was seventeen an' set on the fence an' chewed gum an' played 'twas tobacker while old Dan'el c.u.mmings's farm was auctioned off down to the last stick o' timber. Well, I don't know 's I could say how 'twas done, nor how it's commonly done now, but I can take a try at it. Now, here's some books Miss Letty's brought down out o' the attic. I don't know what they be, but they look to me as if they might ha' come out of her gran'ther's lib'ry--old Parson Lamson, ye know."

"Yes," said Miss Letty, from the low rocking-chair a neighbor had insisted on giving up to her, "they did. Many's the time I've watched him porin' over 'em winter nights with two candles."

"There, you see! they're Parson Lamson's books. Many a good word he got out of 'em for his sermons, I'll bet ye a dollar. Why, ye recollect how much Parson Lamson done for this town, how he got up sewin'-circles in war-time an' set everybody to sc.r.a.pin' lint, an' climbed out of his bed after he couldn't hardly stand with rheumatism to say good-by to the boys when they enlisted, an' how he wrote to 'em an' prayed for 'em--why, them books are wuth their weight in gold. How much am I offered for Parson Lamson's books? A dollar-seventy--Why, bless you, Tim Fry, there ain't a book there but's wuth a dollar-seventy taken by itself! Why, I'll start it myself at thirteen--"

"Oh, don't you do it, Cap'n, don't you do it!" called Miss Letty piercingly. "I don't want 'em to bid on gran'ther's books. I want them books myself, if I have to work my fingers to the bone."

The cap'n took out his beautiful colored handkerchief with Joseph and his brethren on it, and wiped his face.