Tiverton Tales | Page 8

t' other off into the attic. 'T ain't worth fixin'."
"Worth it!" repeated Enoch. "Well, I guess I'll give it a chance."
He drew a chair to the stove, and there hesitated. "Say, 'Melia," said he,
"should you jest as soon I'd bring in that old shoemaker's bench out o'
the shed? It's low, an' I could reach my tools off'n the floor."
Amelia lacked the discipline of contact with her kind, but she was
nevertheless smooth as silk in her new wifehood.
"Law, yes, bring it along," said she. "It's a good day to clutter up. The'
won't be nobody in."
So, while Enoch laid apart the clock with a delicacy of touch known
only to square, mechanical fingers, and Rosie played with the
button-box on the floor, assorting colors and matching white with white,
Amelia scoured the tins. Her energy kept pace with the wind; it whirled
in gusts and snatches, yet her precision never failed.
"Made up your mind which cow to sell?" she asked, opening a
discussion still unsettled, after days of animated talk.
"Ain't much to choose," said Enoch. He had frankly set Amelia right on
the subject of livestock; and she smilingly acquiesced in his larger
knowledge. "Elbridge True's got a mighty nice Alderney, an' if he's
goin' to sell milk another year, he'll be glad to get two good milkers like
these. What he wants is ten quarts apiece, no matter if it's bluer'n a
whetstone. I guess I can swap off with him; but I don't want to run arter
him. I put the case last Thursday. Mebbe he'll drop round."
"Well," concluded Amelia, "I guess you're pretty sure to do what's
right."
The forenoon galloped fast, and it was half past eleven before she
thought of dinner.

"Why," said she, "ain't it butcher day? I've been lottin' on a piece o'
liver."
"Butcher day is Thursday," said Enoch. "You've lost count."
"My land!" responded Amelia. "Well, I guess we can put up with some
fried pork an' apples." There came a long, insistent knock at the outer
door. "Good heavens! Who's there! Rosie, you run to the side-light, an'
peek. It can't be a neighbor. They'd come right in. I hope my soul it
ain't company, a day like this."
Rosie got on her fat legs with difficulty. She held her pinafore full of
buttons, but disaster lies in doing too many things at once; there came a
slip, a despairing clutch, and the buttons fell over the floor. There were
a great many round ones, and they rolled very fast. Amelia washed the
sand from her parboiled fingers, and drew a nervous breath. She had a
presentiment of coming ill, painfully heightened by her consciousness
that the kitchen was "riding out," and that she and her family rode with
it. Rosie came running back from her peephole, husky with importance.
The errant buttons did not trouble her. She had an eternity of time
wherein to pick them up; and, indeed, the chances were that some tall,
benevolent being would do it for her.
"It's a man," she said. "He's got on a light coat with bright buttons, and
a fuzzy hat. He's got a big nose."
Now, indeed, despair entered into Amelia, and sat enthroned. She sank
down on a straight-backed chair, and put her hands on her knees, while
the knock came again, a little querulously.
"Enoch," said she, "do you know what's happened? That's cousin Josiah
Pease out there." Her voice bore the tragedy of a thousand past
encounters; but that Enoch could not know.
"Is it?" asked he, with but a mild appearance of interest. "Want me to
go to the door?"
"Go to the door!" echoed Amelia, so stridently that he looked up at her

again. "No; I don't want anybody should go to the door till this room's
cleared up. If 't w'an't so everlastin' cold, I'd take him right into the
clock-room, an' blaze a fire; but he'd see right through that. You gether
up them tools an' things, an' I'll help carry out the bench."
If Enoch had not just then been absorbed in a delicate combination of
brass, he might have spoken more sympathetically. As it was, he
seemed kindly, but remote.
"Look out!" said he, "you'll joggle. No, I guess I won't move. If he's
any kind of a man, he'll know what 't is to clean a clock."
Amelia was not a crying woman, but the hot tears stood in her eyes.
She was experiencing, for the first time, that helpless pang born from
the wounding of pride in what we love.
"Don't you see, Enoch?" she insisted. "This room looks like the Old
Boy--an' so do you--an' he'll go home an' tell all the folks at the Ridge.
Why, he's heard