Page:Tales of the White Hills.djvu/42

36 &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; said her father, after a fit of musing, &ldquo;there is something natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to pass.&rdquo;

&ldquo;Perhaps they may,&rdquo; observed the wife. &ldquo;Is the man thinking what he will do when he is a widower?&rdquo;

&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. &ldquo;When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some other township round the White Mountains; but not where they could tumble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a plain honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one&mdash;with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.&rdquo;

&ldquo;There now!&rdquo; exclaimed the stranger; &ldquo;it is our nature to desire a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man.&rdquo;

&ldquo;We&rsquo;re in a strange way, to-night,&rdquo; said the wife, with tears in her eyes. &ldquo;They say it&rsquo;s a sign of something, when folks&rsquo; minds go a wandering so. Hark to the children!&rdquo;

They listened accordingly. The younger children