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"You tell her to come here! I want to see her."
"What! down there? Law, Heman! you come in the mornin'. She'll ketch her death o' cold gittin' up an' dressin', now she's got all
warmed through."
"What's he want, mother?" came Roxy's clear voice from within the room. "That's Heman Blaisdell's voice."
"Roxy, you come down here!" called Heman, masterfully.
There was a pause, during which Mrs. Cole was apparently pulled away from the window. Then Roxy, her head enveloped in a shawl,
appeared in her mother's place.
"Well!" she said, impatiently. "What is it?"
Heman's voice found a pleading level.
"Roxy, will you marry me?"
"Why, Heman, you 're perfectly ridiculous! At this time o' night, too!"
"You answer me!" cried Heman, desperately. "I want you! Won't you have me, Roxy? Say?"
"Roxy!" came her mother's muffled voice from the bed. "You'll git your death o' cold. What's he want? Can't you give him an answer
an' let him go?"
"Won't you, Roxy?" called Heman. "Oh, won't you?"
Roxy began to laugh hysterically. "Yes," she said, and shut the window.
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Meadow Grass
When Heman had put up the horse, he walked into the kitchen, and straight up to the Widder Poll, who stood awaiting him, clinging to
the table by one fat hand.
"Now, look here!" he said, good-naturedly, speaking to her with a direct address he had not been able to use for many a month, "You
listen to me. I don't want any hard feelin', but to-morrer mornin' you've got to pick up your things an' go. You can have the house
down to the Holler, or you can go out nussin', but you come here by your own invitation, an' you've got to leave by mine. I'm goin' to
be married as soon as I can git a license." Then he walked to the bedroom, and shut himself in with his ruined bass-viol and the
darkness.
And the Widder Poll did not speak.
* * * * *
There are very few cosey evenings when Heman and Roxy do not smile at each other across the glowing circle of their hearth, and ask,
the one or the other, with a perplexity never to be allayed,--
"Do you s'pose she tumbled, or did she put her foot through it a-purpose?"
But Heman is sure to conclude the discussion with a glowing tribute to Brad Freeman, his genius and his kindliness.
"I never shall forgit that o' Brad," he announces. "There wa'n't another man in the State o' New Hampshire could ha' mended it as he
did. Why, you never'd know there was a brack in it!"
HEARTSEASE.
"For as for heartsease, it groweth in a single night."
"What be you doin' of, Mis' Lamson?" asked Mrs. Pettis, coming in from the kitchen, where she had been holding a long conversation
with young Mrs. Lamson on the possibility of doing over sugar-barberry. Mrs. Pettis was a heavy woman, bent almost double with
rheumatism, and she carried a baggy umbrella for a cane. She was always sighing over the difficulty of "gittin' round the house," but
nevertheless she made more calls than any one else in the neighborhood. "It kind o' limbered her up," she said, "to take a walk after
she had been bendin' over the dish-pan."
Mrs. Lamson looked up with an alert, bright glance. She was a little creature, and something still girlish lingered in her straight,
slender figure and the poise of her head. "Old Lady Lamson" was over eighty, and she dressed with due deference to custom; but
everything about her gained, in the wearing, an air of youth. Her aggressively brown front was rumpled a little, as if it had tried to
crimp itself, only to be detected before the operation was well begun, and the purple ribbons of her cap flared rakishly aloft.
"I jest took up a garter," she said, with some apology in her tone. "Kind o' fiddlin' work, ain't it?"
"Last time I was here, you was knittin' mittins," continued Mrs. Pettis, seating herself laboriously on the lounge, and leaning forward
upon the umbrella clutched steadily in two fat hands. "You're dretful forehanded. I remember I said so then. 'Samwel 'ain't got a mittin,
to his name,' I says, 'nor he won't have 'fore November.'"
"Well, I guess David's pretty well on't for everything now," answered Mrs. Lamson, with some pride. "He's got five pair o' new
mittins, an' my little blue chist full o' stockin's. I knit 'em two-an'-two, an' two-an'-one, an' toed some on 'em off with white, an' some
with red, so's to keep 'em in pairs. But Mary said I better not knit any more, for fear the moths'd git into 'em, an' so I stopped an' took
up this garter. But _'tis_ dretful fiddlin' work!"
A brief silence fell upon the two, while the sweet summer scents stole in at the window,--the breath of the cinnamon rose, of growing,
grass and good brown earth. Mrs. Pettis pondered, looking vacantly before her, and Old Lady Lamson knit hastily on. Her needles
clicked together, and she turned her work with a jerk in beginning a row. But neither was oppressed by lack of speech. They
understood each other, and no more thought of "making talk" than of pulling up a seed to learn whether it had germinated. It was Mrs.
Pettis who, after, a natural interval; felt moved to speak.
"Mary's master thoughtful of you, ain't she? 'Tain't many sons' wives would be so tender of, anybody, now is it?"
Mrs. Lamson looked up sharply, and then, with the same quick movement; bent her eyes on her work.
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Meadow Grass
"Mary means to do jest what's right," she answered. "If she don't make out, it ain't for lack o' tryin'."
"So I says to Samwel this mornin". 'Old Lady Lamson 'ain't one thing to concert herself with,' says I, 'but to git dressed an' set by the
winder. When dinner-time comes, she's got nothin' to do but hitch up to the table; an' she don't have to touch her hand to a dish.' Now
ain't that so, Mis' Lamson?"
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