My Neighbors | Page 4

ornaments of jet, they worshiped in the Congregational Chapel; and as they stood up in their pew, you saw that Olwen was as the tall trunk of a tree at whose shoulders are the stumps of chopped branches, and that Lisbeth's body was as a billhook. Once they journeyed to Aberporth and they laid a wreath of wax flowers and a thick layer of gravel on their mother's grave. They tore a gap in the wall which divided their little gardens, and their feet, so often did one visit the other, trod a path from backdoor to backdoor.
Nor was their love confused in the joy that each had in Jennie, for whom sacrifices were made and treasures hoarded.
But Jennie was discontented, puling for what she could not have, mourning her lowly fortune, deploring her spinsterhood.
"Bert and me are getting married Christmas," she said on a day.
"Hadn't you better wait a while," said Olwen. "You're young."
"We talked of that. Charlie is getting on. He's thirty-eight, or will be in January. We'll keep on in the shop and have sleep-out vouchers and come here week-ends."
As the manner is, the mother wept.
"You've nothing to worry about," Lisbeth assuaged her sister. "He's steady and respectable. We must see that she does it in style. You look after the other arrangements and I'll see to her clothes."
She walked through wind and rain and sewed by day and night, without heed of the numbness which was creeping into her limbs; and on the floor of a box she put six jugs which had been owned by the Welshwoman who was Adam's grandmother, and over the jugs she arrayed the clothes she had made, and over all she put a piece of paper on which she had written, "To my darling niece from her Aunt Lisbeth."
Jennie examined her aunt's handiwork and was exceedingly wrathful.
"I shan't wear them," she cried. "She might have spoken to me before she started. After all, it's my wedding. Not hers. Pwf! I can buy better jugs in the six-pence-apenny bazaar."
"Aunt Liz will alter them," Olwen began.
"I agree with her," said Charlie. "Aunt Liz should be more considerate seeing what I have done for her. But for me she wouldn't have any money at all."
Charlie and Jennie stirred their rage and gave utterance to the harshest sayings they could devise about Lisbeth; "and I don't care if she's listening outside the door," said Charlie; "and you can tell her it's me speaking," said Jennie.
Throughout Saturday and Sunday Jennie pouted and dealt rudely and uncivilly with her mother; and on Monday, at the hour she was preparing to depart, Olwen relented and gave her twenty pounds, wherefore on the wedding day Lisbeth was astonished.
"Why aren't you wearing my presents?" she asked.
"That's it," Jennie shouted. "Don't you forget to throw cold water, will you? It wouldn't be you if you did. I don't want to. See? And if you don't like it, lump it."
Olwen calmed her sister, whispering: "She's excited. Don't take notice."
At the quickening of the second dawn after Christmas, Jennie and Bert arose, and Jennie having hidden her wedding-ring, they two went about their business; and when at noon Olwen proceeded to number seven, she found that Lisbeth had been taken sick of the palsy and was fallen upon the floor. Lisbeth was never well again, and what time she understood all that Olwen had done for her, she melted into tears.
"I should have gone but for you," she averred. "The money's Jennie's, which is the same as I had it and under the mattress, and the house is Jennie's."
"She's fortunate," returned Olwen. "She'll never want for ten shillings a week which it will fetch. You are kind indeed."
"Don't neglect them for me," Lisbeth urged. "I'll be quite happy if you drop in occasionally."
"Are you not my sister?" Olwen cried. "I'm having a bed for you in our front sitting-room. You won't be lonely."
Winter, spring, and summer passed, and the murmurs of Jennie and Charlie against Lisbeth were grown into a horrid clamor.
"Hush, she'll hear you," Olwen always implored. "It won't be for much longer. The doctor says she may go any minute."
"Or last ages," said Charlie.
"Jennie will have the house and the money," Olwen pleaded. "And the money hasn't been touched. Same as you gave it to her. She showed it to me under the mattress. Not every one have two houses."
"By then you will have bought it over and over again," said Charlie. "Doesn't give Jennie and me much chance of saving, does it?"
"And she can't eat this and can't eat that," Jennie screamed. "She won't, she means."
Weekly was Olwen harassed with new disputes, and she rued that she had said: "I'll have a bed for you in our front sitting-room"; and as it falls out in family quarrels, she sided