"'Mandy, you an' Kelup come here!" called Aunt Melissa Adams. She loomed very prosperous, over the way, in her new poplin and her lace-trimmed cape. "Jest look at these roosters! They've got spurs on their legs as long's my darnin'-needle. What under the sun makes 'em grow so! An' ain't they the nippin'est little creatur's you ever see?"

"They're fightin'-c.o.c.ks," answered Caleb, tolerantly.

"Fightin'-c.o.c.ks? You don't mean to tell me they're trained up for that?"

"Yes, I do!"

"Well, I never heard o' such a thing in a Christian land! never! Whose be they? I'll give him a piece o' my mind, if I live another minute!"

"You better let other folks alone," said Caleb, stolidly.

"'Mandy," returned Aunt Melissa, in a portentous undertone, "be you goin' to stan' by an' see your own aunt spoke to as if she was the dirt under your feet?"

Amanda had once in her life a.s.serted herself at a crucial moment, and she had never seen cause to regret it. Now she "spoke out" again. She made her slender neck very straight and stiff, and her lips set themselves firmly over the words,--

"I guess Caleb won't do you no hurt, Aunt Melissa. He don't want you should make yourself a laughin'-stock, nor I don't either. There's Uncle Hiram, over lookin' at the pigs. I guess he don't see you. Caleb, le's we move on!"

Aunt Melissa stood looking after them, a ma.s.s of quivering wrath.

"Well, I must say!" she retorted to the empty air. "If I live, I must say!"

Dilly took her placid companion by the arm, and hurried her on. Human jangling wore sadly upon her; under such maddening onslaught she was not incapable of developing "nerves." They stopped before a stall where another heifer stood, chewing her cud, and looking away into remembered pastures.

"Oh, see!" said Molly, "'Price $500'! Do you b'lieve it?"

"Well, well!" came Mrs. Eli Pike's ruminant voice from the crowd. "I'm glad I don't own that creatur'! I shouldn't sleep nights if I had five hunderd dollars in cow."

"Tain't five hunderd dollars," said Hiram Cole, elbowing his way to the front. "'Tain't p'inted right, that's all. P'int off two ciphers--"

"Five dollars!" snickered a Crane boy, diving through the crowd, and proceeding to stand on his head in a cleared s.p.a.ce beyond. "That's wuth less'n Miss Lucindy's hoss!"

Hiram Cole considered again, one lean hand stroking his cheek.

"Five--fifty--" he announced. "Well, I guess _'tis_ five hunderd, arter all! Anybody must want to invest, though, to put all their income into perishable cow-flesh!"

"You look real tired," whispered Molly. "Le's come inside, an' perhaps we can set down."

The old hall seemed to have donned strange carnival clothes, for a mystic Saturnalia. It was literally swaddled in bedquilts,--tumbler-quilts, rising-suns, Jacob's-ladders, log-cabins, and the more modern and altogether terrible crazy-quilt. There were square yards of tidies, on wall and table, and furlongs of home-knit lace. Dilly looked at this product of the patient art of woman with a dispirited gaze.

"Seems a kind of a waste of time, don't it?" she said, dreamily, "when things are blowin' outside? I wisht I could see suthin' made once to look as handsome as green buds an' branches. Law, dear, now jest turn your eyes away from them walls, an' see the tables full of apples! an'

them piles o' carrots, an' cabbages an' squashes over there! Well, 'tain't so bad if you can look at things the sun's ever shone on, no matter if they be under cover." She wandered up and down the tables, caressing the rounded outlines of the fruit with her loving gaze. The apples, rich and fragrant, were a glory and a joy. There were great pound sweetings, full of the pride of mere bigness; long purple gilly-flowers, craftily hiding their mealy joys under a sad-colored skin; and the Hubbardston, a portly creature quite unspoiled by the prosperity of growth, and holding its lovely scent and flavor like an individual charm. There was the Bald'in, stand-by old and good as bread; and there were all the rest. We know them, we who have courted Pomona in her fair New England orchards.

Near the fancy-work table sat Mrs. Blair, of the Old Ladies' Home, on a stool she had wrenched from an unwilling boy, who declared it belonged up in the Academy, whence he had brought it "to stan' on" while he drove a nail. And though he besought her to rise and let him return it, since he alone must be responsible, the old lady continued sitting in silence. At length she spoke,--

"Here I be, an' here I'm goin' to set till the premiums is tacked on.

Them pinb.a.l.l.s my neighbor, Mis' Dyer, made with her own hands, an'

she's bent double o' rheumatiz. An' I said I'd bring 'em for her, an'

I'd set by an' see things done fair an' square."

"There, Mrs. Blair, don't you worry," said Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l, a director of the Home, putting a hand on the martial and belligerent shoulder, "Don't you mind if she doesn't get a premium. I'll buy the pinb.a.l.l.s, and that will do almost as well."

"My! if there ain't goin' to be trouble between Mary Lamson an'

Sereno's Hattie, I'll miss my guess!" said a matron, with an appreciative wag of her purple-bonneted head. "They've either on 'em canned up more preserves 'n Tiverton an' Sudleigh put together, an'

Mary's got I dunno what all among 'em!--squash, an' dandelion, an'

punkin with lemon in't. That's steppin' acrost the bounds, _I_ say! If she gits a premium for puttin' up gardin-sa.s.s, I'll warrant there'll be a to-do. An' Hattie'll make it!"

"I guess there won't be no set-to about such small potaters," said Mrs.

Pike, with dignity. Her broad back had been unrecognized by the herald, careless in her haste. "Hattie's ready an' willin' to divide the premium, if't comes to her, an' I guess Mary'd be, put her in the same place."

"My soul an' body!" exclaimed another, trudging up and waving a large palmleaf fan. "Well, there, Rosanna Pike! Is that you? Excuse me all, if I don't stop to speak round the circle, I'm so put to't with Pa.s.son True's carryin's on. You know he's been as mad as hops over Sudleigh Cattle-Show, reg'lar as the year come round, because there's a raffle for a quilt, or suthin'. An' now he's come an' set up a sort of a stall over t'other side the room, an' folks thinks he's tryin' to git up a revival. I dunno when I've seen John so stirred. He says we hadn't ought to be made a laughin'-stock to Sudleigh, Pa.s.son or no Pa.s.son. An'

old Square Lamb says--"

But the fickle crowd waited to hear no more. With one impulse, it surged over to the other side of the hall, where Parson True, standing behind a table brought down from the Academy, was saying solemnly,--

"Let us engage in prayer!"

The whispering ceased; the t.i.tters of embarra.s.sment were stilled, and mothers tightened their grasp on little hands, to emphasize the change of scene from light to graver hue. Some of the men looked lowering; one or two strode out of doors. They loved Parson True, but the Cattle-Show was all their own, and they resented even a ministerial innovation. The parson was a slender, wiry man, with keen blue eyes, a serious mouth, and an overtopping forehead, from which the hair was always brushed straight back. He called upon the Lord, with pa.s.sionate fervor, to "bless this people in all their outgoings and comings-in, and to keep their feet from paths where His blessing could not attend them."

"Is that the raffle, mother?" whispered the smallest Crane boy; and his mother promptly administered a shake, for the correction of misplaced curiosity.

Then Parson True opened his eyes on his somewhat shamefaced flock and their neighbor townsmen, and began to preach. It was good to be there, he told them, only as it was good to be anywhere else, in the spirit of G.o.d. Judgment might overtake them there, as it might at home, in house or field. Were they prepared? He bent forward over the table, his slim form trembling with the intensity of gathering pa.s.sion. He appealed to each one personally with that vibratory quality of address peculiar to him, wherein it seemed that not only his lips but his very soul challenged the souls before him. One after another joined the outer circle, and faces bent forward over the shoulders in front, with that strange, arrested expression inevitably born when, on the flood of sunny weather, we are reminded how deep the darkness is within the grave.

"Let every man say to himself, 'Thou, G.o.d, seest me!'" reiterated the parson. "Thou seest into the dark corners of my heart. What dost Thou see, O G.o.d? What dost Thou see?"

Elvin and Rosa had drawn near with the others. She smiled a little, and the hard bloom on her cheeks had not wavered. No one looked at them, for every eye dwelt on the preacher; and though Elvin's face changed from the healthy certainty of life and hope to a green pallor of self-recognition, no one noticed. Consequently, the general surprise culminated in a shock when he cried out, in a loud voice, "G.o.d be merciful! G.o.d be merciful! I ain't fit to be with decent folks! I'd ought to be in jail!" and pushed his way through the crowd until he stood before the parson, facing him with bowed head, as if he found in the little minister the vicegerent of G.o.d. He had kept Rosa's hand in a convulsive grasp, and he drew her with him into the eye of the world.

She shrank back, whimpering feebly; but no one took note of her. The parson knew exactly what, to do when the soul travailed and cried aloud. He stretched forth his hands, and put them on the young man's shoulders.

"Come, poor sinner, come!" he urged, in a voice of wonderful melting quality. "Come! Here is the throne of grace! Bring your burden, and cast it down."

The words roused Elvin, or possibly the restraining touch. He started back.

"I can't!" he cried out, stridently. "I can't yet! I can't! I can't!"

Still leading Rosa, who was crying now in good earnest, he turned, and pushed his way out of the crowd. But once outside that warm human circuit, Rosa broke loose from him. She tried to speak for his ear alone, but her voice strove petulantly through her sobs:

"Elvin Drew, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself! You've made me ridiculous before the whole town, and I never'll speak to you again as long as I live. If I hadn't stayed with you every minute, I should think you'd been drinking, and I believe to my soul you have!" She buried her face in her handkerchief, and stumbled over to a table where Laura Pettis was standing, open-eyed with amazement, and the two clasped each other, while Rosa cried on. Elvin only looked about him, in a bewildered fashion, when the warm hand was wrenched away; then, realizing that he was quite alone, his head bent under a deeper dejection. He seemed unable to move from the spot, and stood there quite stupidly, until murmurs of "What's the matter of him?" came from the waiting crowd, and Parson True himself advanced, with hands again outstretched. But Dilly Joyce forestalled the parson. She, too came forward, in her quick way, and took Elvin firmly by the arm.

"Here, dear," she said, caressingly, "you come along out-doors with us!"

Elvin turned, still hanging his head, and the three (for little Molly had come up on the other side, trying to stand very tall to show her championship) walked out of the hall together. Dilly had ever a quick eye for green, growing things, and she remembered a little corner of the enclosure, where one lone elm-tree stood above a bank. Thither she led him, with an a.s.sured step; and when they had reached the shadow, she drew him forward, and said, still tenderly,--

"There, dear, you set right down here an' think it over. We'll stay with ye. We'll never forsake ye, will we, Molly?"

Molly, who did not know what it was all about, had no need to know.

"Never!" she said, stanchly.

The three sat down there; and first the slow minutes, and then the hours, went by. It had not been long before some one found out where they were, and curious groups began to wander past, always in silence, but eying them intently. Elvin sat with his head bent, looking fixedly at a root of plantain; but Molly confronted the alien faces with a haughty challenging stare, while her cheeks painted themselves ever a deeper red. Dilly leaned happily back against the elm trunk, and dwelt upon the fleece-hung sky; and her black eyes grew still calmer and more content. She looked as if she had learned what things are lovely and of good repute. When the town-clock struck noon, she brought forth their little luncheon, and pressed it upon the others, with a nice hospitality. Elvin shook his head, but Molly ate a trifle, for pride's sake.

"You go an' git him a mite o' water," whispered Dilly, when they had finished. "I would, but I dunno the ways o' this place. It'll taste good to him."