Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 5 (1925-11).djvu/67

Rh HEY lived in my town. He was my uncle, my mother's brother. His father kept a small bookstore—books, pictures and plush goods—you know the sort."

The woman nodded her head reminiscently.

"He took charge of the store when his father died; he was sixteen then. His mother died two years after. He was the only one of the family left. He had always intended to marry Jennie. She was his sweetheart when they were mere babies, before he was eight years old. When he was eight, his uncle had come back from around the world and the boy sat on the stiff black haircloth sofa and listened. When his uncle caught the look in his big eyes, he drew him over and stood him between his knees and asked him what he was going to do when he was a man. 'Marry Jennie and go round the world on our wedding tour,' he answered.

"And that was his one end and aim from that time on. He and Jennie discussed the trip then with gravity and eagerness and perfect confidence; for they knew that they were going, when Joseph was grown up. No one ever called him Joe; he was too earnest. He was my Uncle Joseph.

"When the store was all his, he began putting away every possible cent toward the tour; for he and Jennie had made up their minds that no matter how long they had to wait, they would not marry until they had saved enough for the journey.

"It is slow saving much money in a little store in a little back-number town; but they never faltered. Jennie did 'hand-painted china' which sold in the store at Christmas time; and hot-poker work; and taught classes to do prim little water-colors with green woolly trees and white woolly waves, and gray woolly rocks, and wooden sheep and cattle and Noah’s ark sort of people. I have some of them at home."

The woman tossed the beads together in her lap. "And then?" she said.

"And between times they studied maps and itineraries, and read history and travels, so as to be prepared to get the most out of the trip. There were years and years of this; good years, when quite a lot was added to the little hoard in the bank; bad years, when there were floods and fires and the need of new roofs, when the hoard was drawn upon. When Jennie was thirty she began making her trousseau. They thought that it would be only about two years more; and I used to go and sit with her and watch her work upon the dainty challis and summer-silk and lawn dresses. She made them all herself and—and gathered the sleeves in little lines of gathers with puffs between, and gathers in the skirts all around, and little ruffles for the trimmings on the shoulders."

The woman stopped playing with the beads and leaned forward. "And then?"

"Well, it wasn't just two years, it was five. Uncle Joseph was sick for three months and had to hire a clerk and pay doctors' bills and—it was five years. I helped Jennie pick out the gray alpaca for her traveling dress. I was fourteen then; I am thirty-four now; and she and Uncle Joseph were my dearest friends. I had spent hours with them over maps and railroad guides and steamship schedules, ever since I could remember; and now to be really helping to pick out the traveling dress for that wonderful journey—wedding dress and traveling dress in one—it was marvelous."

"And they went then?"

"They were married one morning in May; Uncle Joseph gave me Grandfather's watch that morning; and I bade them good-bye at the church door;—I didn't dare to go to the station with them, but I ran home and hid in the orchard for hours,—