The Wind in the Rose-Bush | Page 4

eyes on her husband, who
was slowly shaking his head, like a Chinese toy.
"Is my niece sick?" asked Rebecca with quick suspicion.
"No, she ain't sick," replied the woman with alacrity, then she caught
her breath with a gasp.
"When did you see her?"
"Let me see; I ain't seen her for some little time," replied the woman.
Then she caught her breath again.
"She ought to have grown up real pretty, if she takes after my sister.
She was a real pretty woman," Rebecca said wistfully.
"Yes, I guess she did grow up pretty," replied the woman in a trembling
voice.
"What kind of a woman is the second wife?"
The woman glanced at her husband's warning face. She continued to
gaze at him while she replied in a choking voice to Rebecca:
"I--guess she's a nice woman," she replied. "I--don't know, I-- guess so.
I--don't see much of her."
"I felt kind of hurt that John married again so quick," said Rebecca;

"but I suppose he wanted his house kept, and Agnes wanted care. I
wasn't so situated that I could take her when her mother died. I had my
own mother to care for, and I was school-teaching. Now mother has
gone, and my uncle died six months ago and left me quite a little
property, and I've given up my school, and I've come for Agnes. I guess
she'll be glad to go with me, though I suppose her stepmother is a good
woman, and has always done for her."
The man's warning shake at his wife was fairly portentous.
"I guess so," said she.
"John always wrote that she was a beautiful woman," said Rebecca.
Then the ferry-boat grated on the shore.
John Dent's widow had sent a horse and wagon to meet her sister-in-
law. When the woman and her husband went down the road, on which
Rebecca in the wagon with her trunk soon passed them, she said
reproachfully:
"Seems as if I'd ought to have told her, Thomas."
"Let her find it out herself," replied the man. "Don't you go to burnin'
your fingers in other folks' puddin', Maria."
"Do you s'pose she'll see anything?" asked the woman with a
spasmodic shudder and a terrified roll of her eyes.
"See!" returned her husband with stolid scorn. "Better be sure there's
anything to see."
"Oh, Thomas, they say--"
"Lord, ain't you found out that what they say is mostly lies?"
"But if it should be true, and she's a nervous woman, she might be
scared enough to lose her wits," said his wife, staring uneasily after
Rebecca's erect figure in the wagon disappearing over the crest of the

hilly road.
"Wits that so easy upset ain't worth much," declared the man. "You
keep out of it, Maria."
Rebecca in the meantime rode on in the wagon, beside a flaxen- headed
boy, who looked, to her understanding, not very bright. She asked him
a question, and he paid no attention. She repeated it, and he responded
with a bewildered and incoherent grunt. Then she let him alone, after
making sure that he knew how to drive straight.
They had traveled about half a mile, passed the village square, and
gone a short distance beyond, when the boy drew up with a sudden
Whoa! before a very prosperous-looking house. It had been one of the
aboriginal cottages of the vicinity, small and white, with a roof
extending on one side over a piazza, and a tiny "L" jutting out in the
rear, on the right hand. Now the cottage was transformed by dormer
windows, a bay window on the piazzaless side, a carved railing down
the front steps, and a modern hard-wood door.
"Is this John Dent's house?" asked Rebecca.
The boy was as sparing of speech as a philosopher. His only response
was in flinging the reins over the horse's back, stretching out one foot
to the shaft, and leaping out of the wagon, then going around to the rear
for the trunk. Rebecca got out and went toward the house. Its white
paint had a new gloss; its blinds were an immaculate apple green; the
lawn was trimmed as smooth as velvet, and it was dotted with
scrupulous groups of hydrangeas and cannas.
"I always understood that John Dent was well-to-do," Rebecca
reflected comfortably. "I guess Agnes will have considerable. I've got
enough, but it will come in handy for her schooling. She can have
advantages."
The boy dragged the trunk up the fine gravel-walk, but before he
reached the steps leading up to the piazza, for the house stood on a
terrace, the front door opened and a fair, frizzled head of a very large

and handsome woman appeared. She held up her black silk skirt,
disclosing voluminous ruffles of starched embroidery, and waited