Keziah Coffin | Page 5

Joseph Cros Lincoln
Takin' up carpets is as hard a test of a body's eyesight as 'tis of
their religion."
Her companion put down the tablecloth she was folding and looked
earnestly at the other woman. To an undiscerning eye the latter would
have looked much as she always did--plump and matronly, with brown
hair drawn back from the forehead and parted in the middle; keen
brown eyes with a humorous twinkle in them--this was the Keziah
Coffin the later generation of Trumet knew so well.
But Grace Van Horne, who called her aunt and came to see her so
frequently, while her brother was alive and during the month following
his death, could see the changes which the month had wrought. She
saw the little wrinkles about the eyes and the lines of care about the
mouth, the tired look of the whole plucky, workaday New England

figure. She shook her head.
"Religion!" she repeated. "I do believe, Aunt Keziah, that you've got
the very best religion of anybody I know. I don't care if you don't
belong to our church. When I see how patient you've been and how
cheerful through all your troubles, it--"
Mrs. Coffin waved the hammer deprecatingly. "There! there!" she
interrupted. "I guess it's a good thing I'm goin' away. Here's you and I
praisin' up each other's beliefs, just as if that wasn't a crime here in
Trumet. Sometimes when I see how the two societies in this little
one-horse place row with each other, I declare if it doesn't look as if
they'd crossed out the first word of 'Love your neighbor' and wrote in
'Fight,' instead. Yet I'm a pretty good Regular, too, and when it comes
to whoopin' and carryin' on like the Come-Outers, I-- Well! well! never
mind; don't begin to bristle up. I won't say another word about religion.
Let's pick the new minister to pieces. ANY kind of a Christian can do
that."
But the new minister was destined to remain undissected that morning,
in that house at least. Grace was serious now and she voiced the matter
which had been uppermost in her mind since she left home.
"Aunt Keziah," she said, "why do you go away? What makes you? Is it
absolutely necessary?"
"Why do I go? Why, for the same reason that the feller that was hove
overboard left the ship--cause I can't stay. You've got to have vittles
and clothes, even in Trumet, and a place to put your head in nights.
Long's Sol was alive and could do his cobblin' we managed to get along
somehow. What I could earn sewin' helped, and we lived simple. But
when he was taken down and died, the doctor's bills and the
undertaker's used up what little money I had put by, and the sewin'
alone wouldn't keep a healthy canary in bird seed. Dear land knows I
hate to leave the old house I've lived in for fourteen years and the town
I was born in, but I've got to, for all I see. Thank mercy, I can pay
Cap'n Elkanah his last month's rent and go with a clear conscience. I
won't owe anybody, that's a comfort, and nobody will owe me; though I

could stand that, I guess," she added, prying at the carpet edge.
"I don't care!" The girl's dark eyes flashed indignantly. "I think it's too
bad of Cap'n Elkanah to turn you out when--"
"Don't talk that way. He ain't turnin' me out. He ain't lettin' houses for
his health and he'll need the money to buy his daughter's summer rigs.
She ain't had a new dress for a month, pretty near, and here's a young
and good-lookin' parson heavin' in sight. Maybe Cap'n Elkanah would
think a minister was high-toned enough even for Annabel to marry."
"He's only twenty-three, they say," remarked Grace, a trifle maliciously.
"Perhaps she'll adopt him."
Annabel was the only child of Captain Elkanah Daniels, who owned
the finest house in town. She was the belle of Trumet, and had been for
a good many years.
Keziah laughed.
"Well," she said, "anyhow I've got to go. Maybe I'll like Boston first
rate, you can't tell. Or maybe I won't. Ah, hum! 'twouldn't be the first
thing I've had to do that I didn't like."
Her friend looked at her.
"Aunt," she said, "I want to make a proposal to you, and you mustn't be
cross about it."
"A proposal! Sakes alive! What'll I say? 'This is so sudden!' That's what
Becky Ryder, up to the west part of the town, said when Jim Baker, the
tin peddler, happened to ask her if she'd ever thought of gettin' married.
'O James! this is so sudden!' says Becky. Jim said afterwards that the
suddenest thing about it was the way he
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