Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/145

Rh forgotten all about. But it was not because he had forgotten Molly that he had forgotten the verses; neither was it because he had forgotten Molly, that when he was, in the Deerway vernacular, "just turned forty," he one day rode over to Middleburg Crossing and asked the widow Thatcher to marry him. He was lonely; he was uncomfortable; he had borne with the eye-service, the short-comings, the ill-nature of hired women in his house as long as he could; and just as the Deerway people had fairly settled down into a belief that "nothing under heaven would induce John Bassett to marry again," that "there was a man who was really true, from first to last, to his first love," they were electrified one fine morning, by finding posted up on the brick meeting-house walls, on the ominous black-board containing the announcement of intended marriages, the names of John Bassett and Mrs. Susan Thatcher.

Mrs. Susan Thatcher was the most notable housekeeper in Wenshire County. She was something of a farmer, too, and had "done very well for a woman," everybody said, with 'Siah's farm since his death. She made the best butter and cheese in the region; dried more apples, and pickled more pickles,—sweet, sour, and "mixed,"—than any two other women. Her bread always took the premium at the County Fair; and as for her "drawn-in rugs," they were the wonder and he admiration of everybody. She was a spinner,