Life at High Tide | Page 8

possessed!); when sometimes your cow will be dry; when your neighbor is mad and won't remember the potato-barrel--the outlook for one is not simple; for two it is sobering.
"But I can do it," Lizzie said to herself, and set her lips hard together.
The gate clicked shut, and Mrs. Butterfield came in, running almost. "Look here, Lizzie Graham,--oh my! wait till I get my breath;--_Lizzie, you can't do it._ Because--" And then, panting, she explained. "So, you see, you just can't," she repeated.
Lizzie said something under her breath, and stared with blank bewilderment at her informant.
"Maybe Josh don't know?"
"Maybe he does know," retorted Mrs. Butterfield. "Goodness! makes me tremble to think if he hadn't told me to-night! Supposin' he hadn't let on about it till this time to-morrow?"
Lizzie put her hands over her face with an exclamation of dismay.
"Oh, well, there!" Mrs. Butterfield said, comfortably; "I don't believe Nat'll mind after he's been at the Farm a bit. Honest, I don't, Lizzie. How comes it you didn't know yourself?"
"I'm sure I don't know; it ain't on my certificate, anyhow. Maybe it's on the voucher; but I ain't read that since I first went to sign it. I just go every three months and draw my money, and think no more about it. Maybe--if they knew at Washington--"
"Sho! they couldn't make a difference for one; and it's just what Josh says--they ain't goin' to pay you for havin' a dead husband if you got a live one. Well, it wouldn't be sense, Lizzie."
Lizzie shook her head. "Wait till I look at my paper--"
Mrs. Butterfield followed her into the house, and waited while she lighted a lamp and lifted a blue china vase off the shelf above the stove. "I keep it in here," Lizzie said, shaking the paper out. Then, unfolding it on the kitchen table, the two women, the lamplight shining upon their excited faces, read the certificate together, aloud, with agitated voices:
"BUREAU OF PENSIONS
"It is hereby certified that in conformity with the laws of the United States--" and on through to the end.
"It don't say a word about not marryin' again," Lizzie declared.
"Well, all the same, it's the law. Josh knows."
Lizzie blew out the lamp, and they went back to the door-step. Mrs. Butterfield's hard feelings were all gone; her heart warmed to Nathaniel; warmed even to the mangy dog that limped out from the barn and curled up on Lizzie's skirt. But when she went away, "comfortable in her mind," as she told her husband, Lizzie Graham still sat in the dark under her elm, trying to get her wits together.
"I know Josh is right," she told herself; "he's a careful talker. I can't do it!" But she winced, and drew in her breath; poor Nathaniel!
She had seen him that afternoon, and had told him, this time with no embarrassment (for he was as simple as a child about it), that she had arranged with Mr. Niles to marry them. "An' you fetch your bag along, Nathaniel, and we'll put the machine together, evenin's," she said.
"Yes, kind woman," he answered, joyously. "Oh, what a weight you have taken from my soul!"
His half-blind eyes were luminous with belief. Lizzie had smiled, and shaken her head slightly, looking at the battered rubbish in the bag--the little, tarnished mirrors, one of them cracked; the two small lenses, scratched and dim; the handful of rusty cogs and wheels. With what passion he had dreamed that he would see that which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive! He began to talk, eagerly, of his invention; but reasonably, it seemed to Lizzie. Indeed, except for the idea itself, there was nothing that betrayed the unbalanced mind. His gratitude, too, was sane enough; he had been planning how he could he useful to her, how he was to do this or that sort of work for her--at least until his eyes gave out, he said, cheerfully. "But by that time, kind woman, my invention will be perfected, and you shall have no need to consider ways and means."
Lizzie, smiling, had left him to his joy, and gone back to sit under her elm in the twilight, and think soberly of the economies which a husband--such a husband--would necessitate.
And then Mrs. Butterfield had come panting up to the gate; and now--
"I don't see as I can tell him!" she thought, desperately. To go and say to Nathaniel, all eager and happy and full of hope as he was, "You must go to the Farm,"--would be like striking in the face some child that is holding out its arms to you. Lizzie twisted her hands together. "I just can't!" But, of course, she would have to. That was all there was to it. If she married him, why, there would be two to