Then, for a peace-offering, Katharine handed her companion a beautiful fern, which the widow tossed aside contemptuously, with:

"Huh! What do I want with a brake? Eunice, she litters the house with 'em bad enough. I ain't a-goin' to add to the muss. Well, here we be, an' there's the key. I've come here alone time an' time again an' never felt the creeps a-doin' it afore to-day. But--my suz! I wouldn't ha'

come now without you to keep me comp'ny, not for anything."

"That's flattering! Am I so brave, then?" asked the girl, giving the housekeeper a sudden little hug.

"Yes, you be. But, my suz! You needn't knock my bunnit off with your foolishness. Seems if this key's gettin' rusty, or else--can't be the door's unlocked, can it?"

"I'm sure I don't know. I was never here before." Then, as the door opened, sniffing a little at the musty odor incident to a tightly closed apartment: "Whew! It needs airing, anyway. Let's throw up all the sashes and set the blinds wide, then it will be the sweetest little cottage in the world."

"Well, you may. And when you've done these down here, you might--you might go up attic and open that winder, too. It's there I've got my things stored that I've been layin' out to show you, soon's I could. Me an' Moses an' Eunice is all a-gettin' old. It's time somebody younger an' likelier to live longer should know. This walk to-day tells me 'at I ain't so spry as I used to be. No tellin', no tellin'. We're here now, an' there some other time, an' life's a shadder, a shadder," ruminated the widow, sitting down on the door-step, and not anxious, apparently, to enter the cottage first.

Which fact Katharine was quick to observe and comment upon, with a laugh: "Oh, you blessed old coward! You're afraid that tramp has shut himself up in your 'prope'ty,' and you'll come upon him unawares. You'd 'risk' me, just as Monty 'risked' Ned Clackett to climb the schoolhouse roof after a ball, not daring to go himself. Well, here goes! You keep watch without while I search within."

Susanna laughed. She was afraid, and owned it frankly; but after Katharine had ransacked the few rooms thoroughly, peeped under the bed in the kitchen-bedroom, opened the few closet doors, and even examined the wall cupboard, she gathered courage to enter, and promptly led the way up-stairs.

The little home was plainly furnished, but represented the romance of her life to old Susanna. Memories of her youth came back and softened the asperity of age, her wrinkled face taking on gentler lines and her harsh voice a tenderer tone. But to-day she was in haste. She felt herself needed at The Maples, even with the capable Deacon Meakin left to "hold the fort," as he expressed it. Going to a chest of drawers she opened the top one and displayed a store of blankets, different from those Katharine had seen. They looked like very coa.r.s.e and heavy flannel, and were yellow with age. "Them was part of my fittin' out. I spun an' wove 'em myself, whilst Sprigg an' me was walkin' out together," she explained, carefully peering into the folds of the cloth, in search of any vagrant moth.

"Why, how in the world could you do that? I thought when one spun and wove they had to have wheels and looms and things. How could you carry such about with you, even with Sprigg, I mean Mr. Sprigg, to help?"

Susanna looked over her spectacles more hurt than angry. But she saw only honest surprise on the girl's face, and, after a pause, explained:

"'Walkin' out together' means keepin' comp'ny; as men an' women do who've promised to marry each other."

"Oh, an engagement! I remember quite well, too well, when papa and Mrs.

s...o...b..ll 'walked out together.' It quite did away with the delightful 'walkin' out' I had always had with him before that time."

"Well, Katy, be sure if Johnny picked her out she was the right one, an'

me an' Eunice hopes to see the pair of ye good friends yet. We're layin'

out to have all them little s...o...b..a.l.l.s down here, or up here, next summer, if we live to see another summer, an' make up our own minds as to how things is. We've settled that."

Which shows that even strong-minded women like Susanna may sometimes change their minds; also lay claim to ideas not originally their own.

But the effect upon Katharine was to sober her completely, and, oddly enough, make her a bit homesick for the old life and the noisy little brothers. She fell to thinking about them so earnestly that she scarcely heard what else the widow was saying, until she was touched upon the arm, and bidden:

"Now, look sharp an' remember. Here 'tis, my shroud an' all goes with it."

"Your--w-h-a-t?" gasped Katharine.

Susanna again looked her surprise, but she was perfectly calm, even cheerfully interested; and, to enlighten the other's ignorance, patiently explained.

"I said my shroud, that I am to be wropped in when I'm buried. I made it years ago, an' styles has changed some, I hear. But this is good, an'

'll be easy for 'em that does it to put on me. It's keepin' real well, nice an' white. Here's the suit of underclothes goes with it, all new, white stockin's--loose an' roomy, an' pins an' needles an' thread--not a thing wantin', so fur as I know. Why, child, what ails you? You look as if you had seen a ghost."

Poor Katharine was so shocked by this revelation which the other made so calmly, that she had turned quite white, and found some difficulty to control her voice, as she returned:

"It's so--so horrible, so ghastly! Right here in all this glory of life to be antic.i.p.ating the grave! Give the dreadful things to me. I hate to touch them, but I'll make myself. I'll carry them right down into the kitchen and make a fire in the stove and burn them up, up, up! Oh, Susanna! how could you?"

The old housekeeper was in her own turn as genuinely surprised. In many a household she knew just such provision for a sad day had been made.

She had even once a.s.sisted at a "bee," where several women had a.s.sembled to prepare a burial garment for an old, bedridden neighbor, who, less "forehanded" than Marsdenites in general, had neglected to provide one for herself. The careless creature was living yet, and likely to outlive many a stronger woman, but that didn't matter. However, such ignorance as Katharine's did not surprise her so much as it would have done had the child's "raising" been in the more favored environment she had herself enjoyed. Of course, she did not yield her treasures to the destruction suggested. She merely closed that drawer and opened another; and here, indeed, her whole bearing changed. Uncovering a big paste-board box, she showed a quant.i.ty of little garments, oddly fashioned, but beautifully preserved, the very folds in which they had been laid away still crisp and fresh.

Over and over the time-yellowed muslin her work-knotted fingers pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed. Her touch was the touch of a mother upon her first-born, and the years that had been between the day of his coming and this were forgotten.

Katharine watching, understood. Her sympathy brought a moisture to her own eyes, which now regarded the childless old woman in a new and reverent light. Never again would Susanna be just the same to her young housemate that she had been. The girl was learning life. Yesterday her lesson--that not all of G.o.d's vagrants are vile; to-day--that all sharp-tongued women are not viragoes.

After a time, said the widow, simply: "Them was my baby's," and softly closed the drawer.

They were well on the way home when Susanna suddenly exclaimed:

"My suz! Ever see such a simpleton? I clean forgot to lock the door; an'

that kitchen-bedroom winder, I doubt that you went near it."

"No, I didn't. I forgot, too. Never mind, you sit here and rest. I'll run back and fasten the whole house, and won't be long. Or you go on toward home and I'll overtake you."

"Sure you just as lief? Well, I don't s'pose you would be afraid now, after I've been there with ye to show you there wasn't nothin' nor n.o.body there, an' I 'low I'd ought to be back soon's I can," responded the housekeeper.

"Afraid? Why, it was you yourself was afraid, you dear old make-believe!

But go on, just the same. I'll make haste," cried Kate, laughing at the other's altered mind, and immediately darting backward through the forest toward the cottage.

The Widow Sprigg walked forward, slowly; pausing here to pick up a nut, or there to examine a tree which she would tell Eunice might better be felled. As she walked she became uneasy, feeling that she had really imposed an unpleasant, possibly perilous, task upon the girl she scolded so freely yet already loved so dearly. Gathering a sprig of wintergreen she chewed it thoughtfully, and scarcely knew when she turned back to retrace her own steps to the cottage and learn what had befallen Katharine, who surely should have been in sight long before.

She came, at last, breathless and excited, catching the widow's arm and dragging her farther into the wood, but saying nothing save that imperative: "Come! Oh, come quick! Quick! We may be too late!"

Perforce the other "came," and there, on her kitchen-bedroom bed, lay Marsden's "tramp," seemingly sick unto death.

CHAPTER XVII.

A SELF-ELECTED CONSTABLE

If Susanna could ever have been "knocked down with a feather," as she often averred, she might have been then.

Indignation, consternation, amazement, all the emotions which have to be expressed in polysyllables, pictured themselves on her countenance as she paused on the bedroom threshold and looked at the intruder over her spectacles, through them, and below them. He lay face down upon the pillows, his dirty boots reposing on her choicest log-cabin quilt, and his groans fairly chilling the blood even in her veins, used though she was to the habits of men in illness. Moses, in his groaniest days, had rarely equalled this.

After the moment's pause her mind worked quickly, and she expressed it in words, spoken more to herself than to Kate, close beside her.

"He mustn't lie there, that way, with them filthy old shoes on. He acts as if he was at the p'int o' death, though folks a-dyin' don't gen'ally caterwaul like that. I bet I know what ails him! It's them pies an'

things he stole! If 'tis, I'm glad of it, serves him right!" she finished, triumphantly, and in her satisfaction went so far as to approach the bed and shake the man's shoulder.

At first he paid no attention to her, and his groans did not cease, though they became rather intermittent, as if the paroxysms of pain were less frequent. Finally, her voice, now pitched to its shrillest, penetrated his consciousness, and at her question: "What's the matter with ye? Got the colic?" he turned upon his side and his face was revealed.

Then, indeed, did Susanna's countenance undergo a more wonderful change.

All the emotions which had earlier crossed it concentrated in one prolonged stare, while she felt her strength oozing from her till she knew she should fall. Her hand left the stranger's shoulder and dropped limply to her side, her jaw fell, and she would have sunk down upon the floor had not Katharine slipped a chair forward to receive her. Upon this she settled, still staring and speechless; and as if he, too, were profoundly moved, the tramp ceased groaning altogether and fixed his burning gaze on her. So they remained, and for so long, that Kate grew frantic, and begged:

"Oh, Susanna! what is wrong? Why do you look at him like that? Why does he look at you? Is he dying? Do you know him? Does he know you? Can't we do something for him? It's so dreadful to see anybody suffer. Even he, poor fellow, who--"