Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/194

 174

��One Summer. A Remmiscence.

��in the field below the garden two Bell- pear trees, as large as elms, were bend- ing their branches, loaded with fruit, a luscious promise for the autumn-time. A button-pear tree, just beyond, was making up in quantity what its fruit lacked in quality.

While I was exploring this well-cul- tivated spot, Mrs. Wetherell called me to breakfast. The kitchen was a large room, running across one end of the house ; it had four windows in it, two east and two west. All this space was filled with the fragrance of coffee and cornmeal bannocks.

Mrs. Wetherell said : " I don't know as you will like your coffee sweetened in the pot, but I always make ours so."

I assured her I should.

During breakfast Mr. Wetherell passed me some cheese, and I asked Mrs. Wetherell if she made cheese.

"Not this month," she replied, "in July and August I shall. I am packing butter now."

" Do you think you are going to be contented back here ? — you won't see as much going on as you do at home," Mr. Wetherell asked me.

" O, yes," I answered ; " I expect to enjoy myself very much."

Samanthy, the daughter, now well advanced in life, seemed very sol- emn and said very httle. I wondered if she were sick, or unhappy. A little later in the day, while I was watching Mrs. Wetherell salt a churning of but- ter in the back porch, she said to me : "You must n't mind Samanthy, she isn't quite right in her head: a good many years ago she had a sad blow." She hesitated; I dishked to ask her what it was, so I said " Poor woman !" " Yes," said her mother, " she is a poor soul. She was expecting to be married to Eben Johnson, a young maL who

��worked on our new barn. She got acquainted with him then, and after a year or so they were promised. Eben was a good fellow, a j'iner by trade. He lived in the village. In the fall befoi"e they would have been married, in the spring, he had typhoid fever, and they sent for Samanthy. She went and took care of him three weeks, and then he died. She came home, and seemed like one in a maze. After a little while she was took with the fever, and Uked to died, and my two girls, Margaret and Frances, both had it and died with it. Samanthy has never been the same since she got well. Her health has been good, but her mind is weak." I had noticed that Mrs. Wetherell seemed very much broken in health and spirits, and after hearing this story I did not wonder that the blows of Prov- idence had weakened her hold on life.

Samanthy was very shy of me at first, but after a few days she would talk in her disjointed way with me.

One morning I was out in the well- house. The well was very deep, and by leaning over the curb, and by put- ting one's arms around one's head, one could see the stars mirrored in the bottom of the dark old well. Saman- thy came out for some water, while I was star-gazing in this way. She said : "What you lost?"

" O, nothing. I am only looking at the stars."

Samanthy looked as if she thought I might be more profitably engaged. I took hold of the handle of the wind- lass, swung off the great oaken bucket, and watched it descend its often- traveled course, bumping against the wet, slippery rocks with which the well was stoned.

Samanthy said : "You can't pull that up ; it 's heavy."

�� �