Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/76

64 Now the Higginses had a little old-fashioned suite (I'd describe it if I had time, though it wasn't called a "suite," but a "set of cheers an' sofy," or something, when they got it) that had been sewn up in covers and stowed away in the spare room—to make room for the ironing—and regularly unsewn, dusted, and cleaned every spring for ten years or more, and sewn up and stowed again, and was little the worse for its twenty years or so of want of air and human society. It was bought before Lizzie was born. Now Lizzie had told Billy not to buy a suite just yet, so one night, while Billy was away, and with the connivance of one or two neighbour cronies, the new old furniture was carried down, and set out in the freshly-cleaned front parlour of Billy's cottage, where it was discovered by Billy early in the morning, greatly to his surprise, and to his eternal gratitude thereafter, in spite of what came later. But to Lizzie it was nothing in particular, for she had known it all along.

"They be just like startin' as Higgins an' me started, an' meant to keep on," old Mrs. Higgins was heard to say, with a momentary evanishment of the twinkle, I should think. I wonder if she and the old man talked it over that night, and by a dying fire, and by their lonely old selves. I wonder. Yes, I wonder. As they started, and meant to keep on.

They went across the fields to the little grey old composite church—whose repairs looked older than itself, with their filled-in and mended and shored-up cracks—and got married. Or, Lizzie married Billy.