An Alabaster Box Part 19

The article in question had melted to a yellow pool under the heat.

Mrs. Daggett gazed at it with wide blue eyes, like those of a child.

"Why, Henry," she protested, "I never heerd you talk so before."

"And likely you won't again. Now you listen, Abby; all I want, is to do what honest business I can with this young woman. She's bound to spend her money, and she's kind of took to me; comes into th' store after her mail, and hangs around and buys the greatest lot o' stuff-- 'Land!' I says to her: 'a body'd think you was getting ready to get married.'"

"Well, now I shouldn't wonder--" began Mrs. Daggett eagerly.

"Don't you get excited, Abby. She says she ain't; real pointed, too.

But about this wall paper; I don't know as I can match up them stripes and figures. I wisht you'd go an' see her, Abby. She'll tell you all about it. An' her scheme about collecting all the old Bolton furniture is perfectly ridiculous. 'Twouldn't be worth shucks after kickin' 'round folk's houses here in Brookville for the last fifteen years or so."

"But you can't never find her at home, Henry," said Mrs. Daggett. "I been to see her lots of times; but Mis' Solomon Black says she don't stay in the house hardly long enough to eat her victuals."

"Why don't you take the buggy, Abby, and drive out to the old place?"

suggested Mr. Daggett. "Likely you'll find her there. She appears to take an interest in every nail that's drove. I can spare the horse this afternoon just as well as not."

"'Twould be pleasant," purred Mrs. Daggett. "But, I suppose, by rights, I ought to take Lois along."

"Nope," disagreed her husband, shaking his head. "Don't you take Lois; she wouldn't talk confiding to Lois, the way she would to you.

You've got a way with you, Abby. I'll bet you could coax a bird off a bush as easy as pie, if you was a mind to."

Mrs. Daggett's big body shook with soft laughter. She beamed rosily on her husband.

"How you do go on, Henry!" she protested. "But I ain't going to coax Lydia Orr off no bush she's set her heart on. She's got the sweetest face, papa; an' I know, without anybody telling me, whatever she does or wants to do is _all_ right."

Mr. Daggett had by now invested his portly person in a clean linen coat, bearing on its front the s.h.i.+ning mark of Mrs. Daggett's careful iron.

"Same here, Abby," he said kindly: "whatever you do, Abby, suits _me_ all right."

The worthy couple parted for the morning: Mr. Daggett for the scene of his activities in the post office and store; Mrs. Daggett to set her house to rights and prepare for the noon meal, when her Henry liked to "eat hearty of good, nouris.h.i.+ng victuals," after his light repast of the morning.

"Guess I'll wear my striped muslin," said Mrs. Daggett to herself happily. "Ain't it lucky it's all clean an' fresh? 'Twill be so cool to wear out buggy-ridin'."

Mrs. Daggett was always finding occasion for thus reminding herself of her astonis.h.i.+ng good fortune. She had formed the habit of talking aloud to herself as she worked about the house and garden.

"'Tain't near as lonesome, when you can hear the sound of a voice--if it is only your own," she apologized, when rebuked for the practice by her friend Mrs. Maria Dodge. "Mebbe it does sound kind of crazy-- You say lunatics does it constant--but, I don't know, Maria, I've a kind of a notion there's them that hears, even if you can't see 'em.

And mebbe they answer, too--in your thought-ear."

"You want to be careful, Abby," warned Mrs. Dodge, shaking her head.

"It makes the chills go up and down my back to hear you talk like that; and they don't allow no such doctrines in the church."

"The Apostle Paul allowed 'em," Mrs. Daggett pointed out, "so did the Psalmist. You read your Bible, Maria, with that in mind, and you'll see."

In the s.p.a.cious, sunlighted chamber of her soul, devoted to the memory of her two daughters who had died in early childhood, Mrs.

Daggett sometimes permitted herself to picture Nellie and Minnie, grown to angelic girlhood, and keeping her company about her lonely household tasks in the intervals not necessarily devoted to harp playing in the Celestial City. She laughed softly to herself as she filled two pies with sliced sour apples and dusted them plentifully with spice and sugar.

"I'd admire to see papa argufying with that sweet girl," she observed to the surrounding silence. "Papa certainly is set on having his own way. Guess bin' alone here with me so constant, he's got kind of willful. But it don't bother me any; ain't that lucky?"

She hurried her completed pies into the oven with a swiftness of movement she had never lost, her sweet, thin soprano soaring high in the words of a winding old hymn tune:

Lord, how we grovel here below, Fond of these trifling toys; Our souls can neither rise nor go To taste supernal joys! ...

It was nearly two o'clock before the big brown horse, indignant at the unwonted invasion of his afternoon leisure, stepped slowly out from the Daggett barn. On the seat of the old-fas.h.i.+oned vehicle, to which he had been attached by Mrs. Daggett's skillful hands, that lady herself sat placidly erect, arrayed in her blue and white striped muslin. Mrs. Daggett conscientiously wore stripes at all seasons of the year: she had read somewhere that stripes impart to the most rotund of figures an appearance of slimness totally at variance with the facts. As for blue and white, her favorite combination of stripes, any fabric in those colors looked cool and clean; and there was a vague strain of poetry in Mrs. Daggett's nature which made her lift her eyes to a blue sky filled with floating white clouds with a sense of rapturous satisfaction wholly unrelated to the state of the weather.

"G'long, Dolly!" she bade the reluctant animal, with a gentle slap of leathern reins over a rotund back. "Git-ap!"

"Dolly," who might have been called Caesar, both by reason of his s.e.x and a stubbornly dominant nature, now fortunately subdued by years of chastening experience, strode slowly forward, his eyes rolling, his large hoofs stirring up heavy clouds of dust. There were sweet-smelling meadows stacked with newly-cured hay on either side of the road, and tufts of red clover blossoms exhaling delicious odors of honey almost under his saturnine nose; but he trotted ponderously on, sullenly aware of the gentle hand on the reins and the mild, persistent voice which bade him "Git-ap, Dolly!"

Miss Lois Daggett, carrying a black silk bag, which contained a prospectus of the invaluable work which she was striving to introduce to an unappreciative public, halted the vehicle before it had reached the outskirts of the village.

"Where you going, Abby?" she demanded, in the privileged tone of authority a wife should expect from her husband's female relatives.

"Just out in the country a piece, Lois," replied Mrs. Daggett evasively.

"Well, I guess I'll git in and ride a ways with you," said Lois Daggett. "Cramp your wheel, Abby," she added sharply. "I don't want to git my skirt all dust."

Miss Daggett was wearing a black alpaca skirt and a white s.h.i.+rtwaist, profusely ornamented with what is known as coronation braid. Her hair, very tightly frizzed, projected from beneath the brim of her straw hat on both sides.

"I'm going out to see if I can catch that Orr girl this afternoon,"

she explained, as she took a seat beside her sister-in-law. "She ought to want a copy of Famous People--in the best binding, too. I ain't sold a leather-bound yit, not even in Gren.o.ble. They come in red with gold lettering. You'd ought to have one, Abby, now that Henry's gitting more business by the minute. I should think you might afford one, if you ain't too stingy."

"Mebbe we could, Lois," said Mrs. Daggett amiably. "I've always thought I'd like to know more about famous people: what they eat for breakfast, and how they do their back hair and--"

"Don't be silly, Abby," Miss Daggett bade her sharply. "There ain't any such nonsense in Famous People! _I_ wouldn't be canva.s.sing for it, if there was." And she s.h.i.+fted her pointed nose to one side with a slight, genteel sniff.

"Git-ap, Dolly!" murmured Mrs. Daggett, gently slapping the reins.

Dolly responded by a single swift gesture of his tail which firmly lashed the hated reminder of bondage to his hind quarters. Then wickedly pretending that he was not aware of what had happened he strolled to the side of the road nearest the hay field.

"Now, if he ain't gone and got his tail over the lines!" cried Mrs.

Daggett indignantly. "He's got more resistin' strength in that tail of his'n--wonder if I can--"

She leaned over the dashboard and grasped the offending member with both hands.

"You hang onto the lines, Lois, and give 'em a good jerk the minute I loosen up his tail."

The subsequent failure of this attempt deflected the malicious Dolly still further from the path of duty. A wheel cramped and lifted perilously.

Miss Daggett squealed shrilly:

"He'll tip the buggy over--he'll tip the buggy over! For pity's sake, Abby!"

Mrs. Daggett stepped briskly out of the vehicle and seized the bridle.

"Ain't you ashamed?" she demanded sternly. "You loosen up that there tail o' yourn this minute!"

"I got 'em!" announced Miss Daggett, triumphantly. "He loosened right up."