Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog | Page 3

rarer intervals I saw the lady.
After a while I not only missed my occasional glimpses of her pretty,
slim figure, always draped in some soft black stuff with a bit of scarlet
at the throat, but I inferred that she did not go about the house singing
in her light-hearted manner, as formerly. What had happened? Had the
honeymoon suffered eclipse already? Was she ill? I fancied she was ill,

and that I detected a certain anxiety in the husband, who spent the
mornings digging solitarily in the garden and seemed to have
relinquished those long jaunts to the brow of Blue Hill, where there is a
superb view of all Norfolk County combined with sundry venerable
rattlesnakes with twelve rattles.
As the days went by it became certain that the lady was confined to the
house, perhaps seriously ill, possibly a confirmed invalid. Whether she
was attended by a physician from Canton or from Milton, I was unable
to say; but neither the gig with the large white allopathic horse, nor the
gig with the homoeopathic sorrel mare, was ever seen hitched at the
gate during the day. If a physician had charge of the case, he visited his
patient only at night. All this moved my sympathy, and I reproached
myself with having had hard thoughts of our neighbors. Trouble had
come to them early. I would have liked to offer them such small,
friendly services as lay in my power; but the memory of the repulse I
had sustained still rankled in me. So I hesitated.
One morning my two boys burst into the library with their eyes
sparkling.
"You know the old elm down the road?" cried one.
"Yes."
"The elm with the hang-bird's nest?" shrieked the other.
"Yes, yes!"
"Well, we both just climbed up, and there's three young ones in it!"
Then I smiled to think that our new neighbors had got such a promising
little family.

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