A Country Doctor | Page 4

Folks used to get him to post books you know,--but he's past
that now. Good-natured creatur' as ever stept; but he always was afeard
of the dark,--'seems 's if I could see him there a-repentin' and the old
white hoss shakin' his head,"--and she laughed again, but quickly
stopped herself and looked over her shoulder at the window.
"Would ye like the curtain drawed?" asked Mrs. Jake. But Mrs.
Thacher shook her head silently, while the gray cat climbed up into her
lap and laid down in a round ball to sleep.

"She's a proper cosset, ain't she?" inquired Mrs. Martin approvingly,
while Mrs. Jake asked about the candles, which gave a clear light. "Be
they the last you run?" she inquired, but was answered to the contrary,
and a brisk conversation followed upon the proper proportions of
tallow and bayberry wax, and the dangers of the new-fangled oils
which the village shop-keepers were attempting to introduce. Sperm oil
was growing more and more dear in price and worthless in quality, and
the old-fashioned lamps were reported to be past their usefulness.
"I must own I set most by good candle light," said Mrs. Martin. "'T is
no expense to speak of where you raise the taller, and it's cheerful and
bright in winter time. In old times when the houses were draftier they
was troublesome about flickering, candles was; but land! think how
comfortable we live now to what we used to! Stoves is such a
convenience; the fire's so much handier. Housekeepin' don't begin to be
the trial it was once."
"I must say I like old-fashioned cookin' better than oven cookin',"
observed Mrs. Jake. "Seems to me's if the taste of things was all drawed
up chimbly. Be you going to do much for Thanksgivin', Mis' Thacher?
I 'spose not;" and moved by a sudden kind impulse, she added, "Why
can't you and John jine with our folks? 't wouldn't put us out, and 'twill
be lonesome for ye."
"'T won't be no lonesomer than last year was, nor the year before," and
Mrs. Thacher's face quivered a little as she rose and took one of the
candles, and opened the trap door that covered the cellar stairs. "Now
don't ye go to makin' yourself work," cried the guests. "No, don't! we
ain't needin' nothin'; we was late about supper." But their hostess
stepped carefully down and disappeared for a few minutes, while the
cat hovered anxiously at the edge of the black pit.
"I forgot to ask ye if ye'd have some cider?" a sepulchral voice asked
presently; "but I don't know now's I can get at it. I told John I shouldn't
want any whilst he was away, and so he ain't got the spiggit in yet," to
which Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin both replied that they were no hands
for that drink, unless 't was a drop right from the press, or a taste o'
good hard cider towards the spring of the year; and Mrs. Thacher soon

returned with some slices of cake in a plate and some apples held in her
apron. One of her neighbors took the candle as she reached up to put it
on the floor, and when the trap door was closed again all three drew up
to the table and had a little feast. The cake was of a kind peculiar to its
maker, who prided herself upon never being without it; and there was
some trick of her hand or a secret ingredient which was withheld when
she responded with apparent cheerfulness to requests for its recipe. As
for the apples, they were grown upon an old tree, one of whose limbs
had been grafted with some unknown variety of fruit so long ago that
the history was forgotten; only that an English gardener, many years
before, had brought some cuttings from the old country, and one of
them had somehow come into the possession of John Thacher's
grandfather when grafted fruit was a thing to be treasured and jealously
guarded. It had been told that when the elder Thacher had given away
cuttings he had always stolen to the orchards in the night afterward and
ruined them. However, when the family had grown more generous in
later years it had seemed to be without avail, for, on their neighbors'
trees or their own, the English apples had proved worthless. Whether it
were some favoring quality in that spot of soil or in the sturdy old
native tree itself, the rich golden apples had grown there, year after year,
in perfection, but nowhere else.
"There ain't no such apples as these, to my mind," said Mrs. Martin, as
she polished a large one with her apron and held it up to the light, and
Mrs. Jake murmured