"Surely it is not your husband? He looked better than usual this morning when he came around to the White House, and he had as fine a catch of fish as I have seen this summer."

"Yea, himself's all right."

"Then it must be Leonard; but I am sure he is a boy of whom any mother might be proud."

"Proud? Yea, but many's the proud heart is the sore heart."

"Tell me all about it," said her young visitor, laying her delicate hand on the red fingers which still clasped the bone-handled steel knife. Mrs. Davitt looked down for a moment in silence, playing with the bent joint of her stiff third finger, then she broke out with a fierceness in curious contrast to her usual gentle speech.

"It's that Tilly Marsden. Bad luck to her for a bowld hussy! She's put the insult on Leonard."

"The insult?"

"Yea, 'tis the same as an insult for all the neighbors to take notice of, whin a gurrl ez hez been kapin' company with a man fur goin' on two years, walks by him now with her nose in the air, lek wan wuz too good to be shpakin' with the praste himself."

"Don't be too hard on Tilly, Mrs. Davitt," remonstrated Winifred, soothingly. "Perhaps she is fond of Leonard still, but does not want him to feel too sure of her. I dare say you were a little like that yourself, when you were a girl."

"Thrue fer ye, me dear!" Mrs. Davitt answered, with that delightful Irish readiness to be diverted from her woes to a more cheerful frame of mind. "Thrue fer ye! I'd never let Michael be sayin' me heart wuz caught before ever he'd shpread the net."

"Then, depend upon it, Tilly feels the same."

"Mebbe it's the thruth you're afther findin' out; but I misthrust, and it's meself will never fergive her if she breaks the heart of the best by in the counthry."

The possibility was too much for the sorrowful mother. She threw her ap.r.o.n over her head, and abandoned herself once more to despair, swaying to and fro disconsolately in the black wooden chair from the back of which the gilt had been half rubbed away by quarter of a century of rocking.

"Do you think it could possibly do any good for me to talk with Leonard?" Winifred ventured, quite dubious in her own mind of the wisdom of the proceeding.

"Ow, if yez would, 'twould like be the savin' o' the by. He'll not bear any of us to shpake wid him at all at all."

"Very well then, I will try to get him to talk about it. Only don't be disappointed if I do not succeed! The chances are that he will not listen to me."

"Not listen to yoursilf, is it!" cried Mrs. Davitt, once more transported to the heights of hope. "Sure, the saints in Hiven would lay down their harps to hear your swate vice. Yes, and aven to look at ye, as ye shtand there, in that white dhress, jist like what wan o'

thimsilves 'ud be wearin'! How becomin' ye are to your clothes!"

Winifred smiled at the subtle flattery; but before she could muster an appropriate acknowledgment, she caught sight of Leonard loitering at the gate.

"There is Leon now; I will ask him to walk part way home with me. It is growing dark, and you know," she added, laughing, "how timid I am!"

Mrs. Davitt smiled in answer to the laugh, for Winifred's daring was the talk of the countryside. She dried her eyes, and peered over her spectacles at her visitor as she picked her way among the chickens, feathered and human, who thronged about the doorstep, to the spot where Leonard stood, listlessly hanging over the gate gazing idly up and down the road.

Mrs. Davitt's heart beat anxiously as she marked the girl stop to speak to him, and when at last she saw him turn and walk beside her up the road, followed suspiciously by Paddy with the basket in his mouth, she burst out into a tearful torrent of joy and thanksgiving.

CHAPTER V

THE OLD SHOP

"Ah! poor Real Life, which I love, can I make others share the delight I find in thy foolish and insipid face?"

The sun was already low in the west, when Flint and Brady, having supped heartily on boiled lobster and corn bread, lighted their pipes and strolled toward the door of the tiny shop which leaned up against the inn as if for support. A bird, looking down upon it in his flight, might have mistaken it for some great mud-turtle, so close did it sprawl along the ground.

For some years it had served as a turkey-house on the farm; but as Marsden had begun to discover possibilities of profit in a shop which should both draw custom to the inn, and find customers in the chance guests of the tavern, he had turned his attention to the work of transforming the poultry-house into a village store, and had been surprised to find how well it adapted itself to its new purpose. True, the beams ran across only a few inches above Marsden's head; but that was rather an advantage than otherwise, for they thus made an excellent subst.i.tute for counters, and the wares were well displayed and within easy reach. Along one beam hung a row of boots of every style and size,--from giant rubbers, reaching to the thighs, in which the Nepaug farmers went wading for seaweed fertilizer, to the clumsy baby shoes, jauntily set off with a scarlet ta.s.sel at the top, in that pathetic effort of the poor to express in their children's dress the poetry so scantily supplied in their own lives. Another beam was hung with wooden pails, and a third gleamed with the reflections of bright-new tinware.

On the shelves opposite the door lay bright hued calicoes flanked by jars of peppermint candies, some of which were rendered doubly irresistible to youthful customers by being cut in heart-shape and decorated with sentimental mottoes chiefly in verse.

Marsden fitted his shop so well, that he seemed little more than an animated bundle of secondhand goods. His cowhide boots were the fellows of those that dangled from the fourth beam. His gayly checked flannel shirt harmonized delightfully with the carriage robes in the corner, and the soft brown-felt hat toned aesthetically with the plug tobacco in the case behind him.

When Flint and Brady looked in at the door, a girl was standing at the counter, turning over the pile of calicoes. She had brought with her a pailful of blueberries which she evidently wished to barter for a remnant of the prints. She showed much disappointment when Marsden declined to trade except upon a cash basis.

"What might this be wuth?" she asked at length, pointing to a red and white calico on the second shelf. Marsden, Yankee-like, answered her question by another. "What'll ye give fur it? It's the end of the piece, and I dunno but I'd as lives you'd hev it ez anybody."

"Wall," answered the girl, cautiously, "I wouldn't give no more'n six cents a yard for it."

"Take it along," said Marsden, wrapping it, as he spoke, in coa.r.s.e brown paper. As he handed it to her he said: "I _wuz_ goin' to offer it to you for five cent."

The girl's face fell.

"You see," whispered Flint to Brady, "there never was a woman who could really enjoy anything unless she thought she had paid less than it was worth. It is my own belief that Eve bought the apple from the Serpent as a bargain, and that Satan a.s.sured her that he would not have sold it to Adam at double the price."

As the maiden withdrew, a buggy rattled up to the door of the little shop. In the broad strip of light formed by the lamp opposite the door, the creaking vehicle stopped short. A dumpy female in a nondescript black garment took the reins, while her male companion descended heavily, putting both feet upon the step, and cautiously lowering himself to the ground close beside the spot where Flint and Brady stood. Once a.s.sured that he had reached the ground in safety, he proceeded to take off his wrinkled duster, fold it tenderly, and lay it on the seat, from beneath which he pulled out a bulky bundle, securely tied up in bed-ticking.

Flint watched the rustic with idle curiosity, as the old man entered the store and deposited his bundle on the counter. Marsden sat on a chair with no back, nursing his knee and a.s.suming indifference to the entrance of the new-comer.

"Be thar any market naow for _quilts_, or _be_ thar?" asked the old farmer, somewhat anxiously, while untying the knots of his parcel.

"I dunno ez thar be, and I dunno _ez_ thar be," Marsden answered.

Both parties seemed to understand each other perfectly. They approached as warily as two foxes. When the roll was finally spread out on the counter, the dim lamplight flickered over a patchwork quilt of the familiar log-cabin pattern, gay with colors as varied as those of Joseph's coat.

"What cher s'pose yer could give fur this?" the new-comer asked with a relapse into unwary eagerness, and an irrepressible pride in this evidence of the household industry of his women folk.

"Dunno, I'm sure," said Marsden, slowly, shifting his quid of tobacco and spitting meditatively on the floor. "Shop-keepin' 's all a resk anyhow. I'll give yer seventy-five cents for it though, jest for a gamble; but n.o.body has much use for quilts in this weather, except to hide their heads under from the skeeters."

"Truth will out," whispered Flint. "Marsden always declares that mosquitoes are unknown at Nepaug."

The owner of the quilt shook his head dubiously.

"Couldn't you go a dollar on it?" he queried. "It took my wife a month to make it, sewin' evenin's."

"Did--did it?"

"Yaas, 'n' it's made out of pieces of the children's clothes, and some on 'em 's dead--and a.s.sociations ought to caount for somethin'."

"Will it last?" questioned the cautious Marsden, twitching it this way and that, and testing the material with his thumb-nail, which he kept long and sharp apparently for the purpose of detecting flaws in dry-goods.

"Wall," a.s.sumed the other, somewhat nettled by the purchaser's skepticism, "I reckon it'll last ez long ez a dollar will."