"Could what?" he inquired hilariously, out of his dream where the present made the fire on the hearth and the past lent him figures to sit by it.

"Why, get along without my old things."

"I s'pose you never so much as thought you couldn't get along without me," suggested the cap'n, in a kindly rallying.

"Yes," said Miss Letty soberly, "I did think that. I knew I couldn't."

SAt.u.r.dAY NIGHT

Jerry Norton stopped for a moment swinging his axe and crashing it into the grain of the tree, and took off his cap to cool his wet forehead. He looked very strong, standing there, equipped with great shoulders, a back as straight as the tree its might was smashing, and the vigor bespoken by red-brown eyes, a sanguine skin, and thick bright hair. He seemed to be regarding the pine trunks against the snow of the hill beyond, and again the tiny tracks nearer by, where a winter animal had flurried; but really all the beauties of the woods were sealed to him.

He was going back five days to his quarrel with Stella Joyce, and scowling as he thought how hateful she had been in her injustice. It was all about the ten-foot strip of land the city man had claimed from Jerry's new building lot through a newly found flaw in the t.i.tle. Jerry, Stella mourned, had relinquished the land without question.

"I'd have hung on to it and fought him through every court in the country," she had declared, in a pa.s.sion of reproach. "You're so numb, Jerry! You just go pokin' along from day to day, lettin' folks walk over you--and never a word!"

Jerry had been unable, out of his numbness, to explain that he gave up the land because the other man's t.i.tle to it, he had seen at once, was a valid one; nor could she, on her side, tell him how her wounded feeling was intensified because old aunt Bray, come from the West for a visit, had settled down upon him and his mother, in all likelihood to remain and go into the new house when it was built. But there was no time for either of them to reach pacific reasons when every swift word of hers begot a sullen look from him; and before they knew it they had parted.

Now, while he was retracing the path of their disagreement, lighted by the flaming lamps of her upbraiding, he heard a movement, light enough for a furry creature on its way to covert, and Stella stood before him.

She did not look either obstinate or likely to continue any quarrel, however well begun. She was a round little person, complete in her miniature beauties, and now her blue eyes sought him with an extremity of emotion very honest and also timid. She had wrapped herself in a little red shawl, and her hands, holding it tight about her, gave a fantastic impression of being clasped in mute appeal. Jerry looked at her in wonder. For an instant they both stood as still as two wood-creatures surprisingly met and, so far, undetermined upon the degree of hostility it would be wise to show.

Stella broke the silence. She retreated a little, in doing it, as if words would bring her nearer and she repudiated that degree of intimacy.

"I just want a favor," she said humbly.

Jerry advanced a step as she withdrew, and the interval between them stayed unchanged. Now the trouble in her face had its effect on him, and he forgot for a moment how he hated her.

"Ain't anything the matter, is there?" he asked, in quick concern.

Stella shook her head, but her eyes brimmed over. That evidently annoyed her, and she released the little shawl to lift a hand and brush the tears away.

"Aunt Hill has come," she said.

He had an impulse to tell her, as a piece of news that would once have concerned them both, that his own aunt was making her plans to go West again, and that she had furnished the money for him to buy back the precious strip of land. The city man, seeing how much he prized it, had sold it to him. But while he reflected that now Stella cared nothing about his intimate concerns, she was rushing on.

"And mother's sick," she ended.

"Sho!" said Jerry, in a sympathizing blur. "Real sick?"

"No, nothin' but her rheumatism. But it's in her back this time. She can't move hand nor foot."

"Why, yes," said Jerry, leaning his axe against the trunk of the wounded tree. "Course! you want I should go over 'n' help lift her."

Stella shook her head in definite finality.

"No, I don't either. Aunt Hill 'n' I can manage well enough. I guess mother'd be provoked 'most to death if I run round callin' the menfolks in."

"Well, what is it then?" asked Jerry, in palpable disappointment. "What is 't you want me to do?"

He thought he had never seen her cheeks so red. They made him think of the partridge-berries under the snow. She began her tale, looking indifferently at him as she proceeded, as if to convince them both that there was nothing peculiar in it all.

"Aunt Hill's an awful trial to mother."

Jerry took up his axe in one hand, and began absently chopping off a circle of bark about the tree. Stella was near saying, "Don't you cut your foot!" but she closed her lips upon the friendly caution and continued:--

"There's nothin' she don't get her nose into, and it just wears mother out."

"She's a great talker, seems if I remembered," said Jerry absently, wishing Stella would keep her hands under the shawl and not get them frozen to death. He was about to add that most women did talk too much, but somehow that seemed an unfortunate implication from one as unpopular as he, and he caught himself up in time. Stella was dashing on now, in the course of her obnoxious task.

"If anything's queer, she just goes at mother hard as she can pelt and keeps at her till she finds it out. And mother hates it enough when she's well, but when she's sick it's just awful. And now she's flat on her back."

"Course," said Jerry, in a comprehending sympathy. "Want I should carry your aunt Hill off to the Junction?"

"Why, you can't! She wouldn't go. You couldn't pry her out with a crowbar. She's made up her mind to stay till a week from to-morrow, and till a week from to-morrow she'll stay."

Jerry looked gloomily into the distance. He was feeling his own limitations as a seer.

"Well," he said, venturing a remark likely to involve him in no way, "I s'pose she will."

"Now, see here," said Stella. She spoke with a defiant hardness, the measure of her hatred for what she had to do. "There's one way you could help us out. She asked about you right away, and of course she thought we were--goin' together, same 's we had been."

Here her voice failed her, and he knew the swift color on her cheek was the miserable sign of her shame in such remembrance. It became his task to hearten her.

"Course," said he. "Anybody would."

"Well, I can't tell her. I ain't even told mother yet, and I don't want to till she's on her feet again. And if aunt Hill gets the leastest wind of it she'll hound mother every minute, and mother'll give up, and--well, I just can't do it, that's all."

Jerry was advancing eagerly now, his lips parted for speech; but her task once begun was easier, and she continued:--

"Now, don't you see? I should think you could."

"Yes," said Jerry, in great hopefulness. "Course I do."

"No, you don't either. It's only, she's goin' to be here not quite a week, and it's only one Sat.u.r.day night."

"Yes," said Jerry, "that's to-morrer night."

"Well, don't you see? If you don't come over, she'll wonder why, and mother'll wonder why, and mother'll ask me, and, oh, dear! dear!"

Jerry thought she really was going to cry, this time, and it seemed to him that these domestic whirlwinds furnished ample reason for it.

"Course!" he said, in whole-hearted misery for her. "It's a bad place.

A man wouldn't think anything of it, but womenfolks are different.

They'd mind it terribly. Anybody could see they would."