Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/602



HEN the town doctor, coming out to Turkey Ridge, had given as his verdict that Elizabeth's one chance of life—he could not say how slim the chance in that plain room, having within it the pleasant noise of bees and the spring sun on the floor—lay in her going to the great hospital in the city, it was Davie who fell to sobbing in his worn hands.

"I'll jest die at home, Davie," she said in her quiet voice.

"You'll take the money put away for our buryin' an' go, dearie!" Davie cried out fiercely. His gaunt frame, stooped as a scholar's, shook so pitifully with his grief, she had not the heart to gainsay him, but after she promised him it only shook the more.

"Why, Davie," she chided, brightly, "ain't I always been a-wantin' to see the city streets with the hurryin' people, 'n' tall houses, 'n' churches with towers on 'em? They ain't many folks on th' Ridge 'll hev sech a lettin'-out as mine."

"If I only had 'nough saved to go too," he mourned.

She answered him simply : "An' who'd I hev to write to me, with you goin' 'long? It 'll seem terrible nice to hear from somebody. I always did love letters. Sence Cousin Tabby died I ain't had one."

"You won't be afeard travellin' so far by yourself?" he asked then, awestruck. Davie had the diffidence of the untravelled. Few men ever left the small farming district of Turkey Ridge for a journey; but if one did so, and the trip were long, he had thereafter a bolder bearing.

"Afeard?" She gave a little trembling laugh which would have deceived no one but a dull old man, now smitten suddenly by sorrow. "The idee o' my bein' afeard! They ain't a mite o' danger o' gettin' run over er lost er nothin'—not a mite."

Under the pretext of bending to hunt for a lost pin she hid the sad fear in her eyes—a fear of all the greater world which was beyond Davie, from whom she had not been parted since the day she had wedded him.

But throughout the time of her preparation she went bravely. She would herself have put in order for leaving the house kept spotless even while her disease had crept upon her, but the news of the doctor's words had gone up through the group of farmhouses, huddled like timid sheep on the road, and the kindly neighbor women left their own work, very heavy in the spring-time, to take her household burdens. In a community where no great things ever came save two, and these two birth and death, misfortune drew soul to soul. Because of her gathering weakness she yielded that others should do the tasks which had always hitherto been hers, but she could not be prevented from the packing of the little leather trunk that had held her wedding things. "You're jest makin' me out a foolish, lazy body," she said, her lips seen quivering for the first time. Then, fearful lest she should seem ungrateful for the kindness of her friends, she made haste to ask where, in the trunk, to put her staid, coarse linen, and where her best cap with its fine bow of lavender ribbon, and would they if they were she take her mending-basket along in hopes there might be moments for Davie's socks?

Many a loving offering was tucked in with her belongings to go with her. Now blue-eyed Annie Todd knocked at the door, bringing a bunch of healing herbs from her mother, who could not leave for reason of her nursing baby. Then old Mr. Bayne drove into the dooryard with a pair of knitted bedroom slippers, wrapped carefully in a newspaper. Next Kerrenhappuch Green, perturbed in his long jaw, pottered down to fetch the pin-