Old Lady Number 31

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Old Lady Number 31, by Louise Forsslund

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Title: Old Lady Number 31
Author: Louise Forsslund
Release Date: November 15, 2003 [eBook #10087]
Language: English
Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD LADY NUMBER 31***
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OLD LADY NUMBER 31
BY LOUISE FORSSLUND
AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF SARAH," "THE SHIP OF DREAMS," ETC.
1909

TO MY MOTHER

CONTENTS
I. THE TEA-TABLE
II. "GOOD-BY"
III. THE CANDIDATE
IV. ONE OF THEM
V. THE HEAD OF THE CORNER
VI. INDIAN SUMMER
VII. OLD LETTERS AND NEW
VIII. THE ANNIVERSARY
IX. A WINTER BUTTERFLY
X. THE TURN OF THE TIDE
XI. MENTAL TREATMENT
XII. "A PASSEL OF MEDDLERS"
XIII. THE PRODIGAL'S DEPARTURE
XIV. CUTTING THE APRON-STRINGS
XV. THE "HARDENING" PROCESS
XVI. "A REG'LAR HOSS"
XVII. THE DESERTER
XVIII. SAMUEL'S WELCOME
XIX. EXCHANGING THE OLIVE-BRANCH
XX. THE FATTED CALF
XXI. "OUR BELOVED BROTHER"

I
THE TEA-TABLE
Angeline's slender, wiry form and small, glossy gray head bent over the squat brown tea-pot as she shook out the last bit of leaf from the canister. The canister was no longer hers, neither the tea-pot, nor even the battered old pewter spoon with which she tapped the bottom of the tin to dislodge the last flicker of tea-leaf dust. The three had been sold at auction that day in response to the auctioneer's inquiry, "What am I bid for the lot?"
Nothing in the familiar old kitchen was hers, Angeline reflected, except Abraham, her aged husband, who was taking his last gentle ride in the old rocking-chair--the old arm-chair with painted roses blooming as brilliantly across its back as they had bloomed when the chair was first purchased forty years ago. Those roses had come to be a source of perpetual wonder to the old wife, an ever present example.
Neither time nor stress could wilt them in a single leaf. When Abe took the first mortgage on the house in order to invest in an indefinitely located Mexican gold-mine, the melodeon dropped one of its keys, but the roses nodded on with the same old sunny hope; when Abe had to take the second mortgage and Tenafly Gold became a forbidden topic of conversation, the minute-hand fell off the parlor clock, but the flowers on the back of the old chair blossomed on none the less serenely.
The soil grew more and more barren as the years went by; but still the roses had kept fresh and young, so why, argued Angy, should not she? If old age and the pinch of poverty had failed to conquer their valiant spirit, why should she listen to the croaking tale? If they bloomed on with the same crimson flaunt of color, though the rockers beneath them had grown warped and the body of the chair creaked and groaned every time one ventured to sit in it, why should she not ignore the stiffness which the years seemed to bring to her joints, the complaints which her body threatened every now and again to utter, and fare on herself, a hardy perennial bravely facing life's winter-time?
Even this dreaded day had not taken one fraction of a shade from the glory of the roses, as Angeline could see in the bud at one side of Abraham's head and the full-blown flower below his right ear; so why should she droop because the sale of her household goods had been somewhat disappointing? Somewhat? When the childless old couple, still sailing under the banner of a charity-forbidding pride, became practically reduced to their last copper, just as Abe's joints were "loosenin' up" after a five years' siege of rheumatism, and decided to sell all their worldly possessions, apart from their patched and threadbare wardrobes and a few meager keepsakes, they had depended upon raising at least two hundred dollars, one half of which was to secure Abe a berth in the Old Men's Home at Indian Village, and the other half to make Angeline comfortable for life, if a little lonely, in the Old Ladies' Home in their own native hamlet of Shoreville. Both institutions had been generously endowed by the same estate, and were separated by a distance of but five miles.
"Might as waal be five hunderd, with my rheumatiz an' yer weak heart," Abraham had growled when Angy first proposed the plan as the only dignified solution to their problem of living.
"But," the little wife had rejoined, "it'll be a mite o' comfort a-knowin' a body's so near, even ef yer can't git tew 'em."
Now, another solution must be found to the problem; for the auction was over, and instead of two hundred dollars they had succeeded in raising