'Piscopal; they'll do anything. What did he say when
you told him?"
"Oh, nothin' much; I asked him about him visitin' me, an' he said it
wa'n't just customary. Said it was better to get married. Said we must
avoid the appearance of evil."
"Well, I ain't sayin' he ain't right; but--" Then, in despair, she turned to
ridicule: "Folks'll say you're marryin' him 'cause you expect he'll make
money on his ghost-machine!"
"Well, you tell 'em I don't believe in ghosts. That'll settle that."
"If folks knew you didn't believe in any hereafter, they'd say you was a
wicked woman!" cried Mrs. Butterfield, angrily;--"an' that fool
machine--"
"I never said I didn't believe in a hereafter. Course his machine ain't
sense. That's what makes it so pitiful."
"He'll never finish it."
"Course he won't. That's why I'm takin' him."
"Well, my _sakes!_" said Mrs. Butterfield, helplessly. And then,
angrily again, "Course if you set out to go your own way, I suppose you
don't expect no help from them as thinks you are all wrong?"
"I do not," Lizzie said, steadily; and then a spark glinted in her
leaf-brown eye: "Folks that have means, and yet would let that poor
unfortunate be taken to the Farm--I wouldn't expect no help from 'em."
"Well, Mis' Graham, you can't say I ain't warned you."
"No, Mis' Butterfield, I can't," Lizzie responded; and the two old
friends parted stiffly.
The word that Lizzie Graham--"poor as Job's turkey!"--was going to
marry Nathaniel May spread like grass fire through Jonesville. Mrs.
Butterfield preserved a cold silence, for her distress was great. To hear
people snicker and say that Lizzie Graham must be "dyin' anxious to
get married"; that she must be "lottin' considerable on a good
ghost-market"; that she "took a new way o' gettin' a hired man without
payin' no wages,"--these things stung her sore heart into actual anger at
the friend she loved. But she did not show it.
"Mis' Graham probably knows her own business," she said, stiffly, to
any one who spoke to her of the matter. Even to her own husband she
was non-committal. Josh sat out by the kitchen door, tilting back
against the gray-shingled side of the house, his hands in his pockets, his
feet tucked under him on the rung of his chair. He was in his
shirt-sleeves, and he had unbuttoned his baggy old waistcoat, for it was
a hot night. Mrs. Butterfield was on the kitchen door-step. They could
look across a patch of grass at the great barn, connected with the little
house by a shed. Its doors were still open, and Josh could see the hay,
put in that afternoon. The rick in the yard stood like a skeleton against
the fading yellow of the sky; some fowls were roosting comfortably on
the tongue. It was very peaceful; but Mrs. Butterfield's face was
puckered with anxiety. "Yet I don't know as I can do anything about it,"
she said, her foot tapping the stone step nervously; "she ain't got no call
to be so foolish."
"Well," Josh said, removing his pipe from his lips and spitting
thoughtfully, "seems Mis' Graham's bound to get some kind of a
husband!" Then he chuckled, and thrust his pipe back under his long,
shaven upper lip.
"Now look a-here, Josh Butterfield; you don't want to be talkin' that
way," his wife said, bitterly. "Bad enough to have folks that don't know
no better pokin' fun at her; but I ain't a-goin' to have you do it."
"Well, I was only just sayin'--"
"Well, don't you say it; that's all."
Josh poked a gnarled thumb down into the bowl of his pipe, reflectively.
"You ain't got a match about you, have you, Emmy?" he said,
coaxingly.
Mrs. Butterfield rose and went into the kitchen to get the match; when
she handed it to him, she said, sighing, "I'm just 'most sick over it."
"You do seem consid'able shuck up," Josh said, kindly.
"Well,--I know Lizzie's just doin' it out of pure goodness; but she'll
'most starve."
"I don't see myself how she's calculatin' to run things," Josh ruminated;
"course Jim's pension wa'n't much, but it was somethin'. And without
it--"
"Without it?--land! Is the government goin' to stop pensions? There! I
never did like the President!"
"No; the government ain't goin' to stop it. Lizzie Graham's goin' to stop
it."
"What on airth you talkin' about?"
"Why, Emmy woman, don't ye know the United States government
ain't no such fool as to go on payin' a woman for havin' a dead husband
when she catches holt of a livin' one? Don't you know that?"
"Josh Butterfield!--you don't mean--"
"Why, that's true. Didn't you know that? Well, well! Why, a smart
widow woman could get consid'able of a income by sendin'
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