MARCH—THE MOON OF SNOW BLINDNESS “How can you ask me to invite her?” I said, looking up from a letter Evan had a moment before handed me to read, and blinking at him reproachfully; for I had been driving about with father all the afternoon with the brightening March sun reflected by ice-coated March snow in my eyes, until the lids seemed to be controlled by rusty wires and everything was enveloped in rainbow-hued mist through which black spots danced.
“Is it possible that you have read the letter? Hear what she writes: ‘Terry says that you live in the country and that you wouldn’t leave your home for anything in the world. I want to live in the country because I was born in the West and lived on a ranch until I was well grown, and I haven’t yet found a city big enough to give me elbow-room, much less a comb in a twelve-story beehive, which in New York it seems is the only available shelter for people like Terry and myself. Besides, I want room for a riding horse and pasture to turn him out.
“?‘We’ve been looking at country places ever since we were married last March, for Uncle Sandy has promised to buy me a home when I want to settle, but he doesn’t believe in paying rent; we’ve seen many that would do, but that isn’t what I want. If we buy a house it must be one that can—not only make me buy it as a matter of course, but that will hypnotize me so that I shall never wish, or be able to get away from it again. Uncle Sandy told me long ago that this was the only way to be sure about choosing one’s husband, and I know he’s right, because though there were plenty of men about, I could do very well without them, one and all, until Terry’s horse stepped into a (prairie) dog’s hole, throwing him so that his ankle buckled, and they brought him up to the ranch because Uncle Sandy is a sort of natural bonesetter. That was in March, too. March has always been a good month to me: that’s why, this year, I’m building on striking a home in the month. If we don’t, I foresee a wandering life and bad days for Terry ahead! [“She is certainly frank,” I interjected.]
“?‘I want to see your place and, if possible, find out what it is that makes you hug it so close, and I want to see it soon; so if you will please engage a room for us at the nearest hotel, Terry and I will go down for Sunday, and I can wait behind a bit and look around the neighbourhood.
“?‘I’ve been at him about this for a month, but he always forgets to ask when he sees you. Then, too, the poor boy is a bit discouraged; we’ve been to so many places that we know the railway time-tables of all the villages within an hour of the city as well as we know our twice twos. He thinks the only possible way to be satisfied is to inherit a place, and “feel the blood of your people in the soil” as he puts it. But how can we? I’ve no people but Uncle Sandy at the ranch, which is several thousand miles inconvenient to Terry’s work, and his people are in the old country, where, at best, the family nest, though decidedly a last year’s one, was overfull, and dropped him out (he says you’ll appreciate that). So you see, we’ve both got to start and make believe until it seems natural.
“?‘I hope I’m not putting you to trouble, but in the West we’re always glad to step out for a prospective homesteader.
“?‘Sincerely, your possible neighbour,
“?‘Vesta Donelly.’?”
“I didn’t suppose it would put you out very much to have a jolly sort of girl here for a few days at this dull time of the year,” said Evan, regretfully, rather than apologetically, and dodging the real issue.
“It isn’t the trouble. I would welcome any one with open arms who cared to come here in the first three weeks of March (as to the fourth week, barring a blizzard, my mind goes back to the earth and revels in the task of keeping the temperature of the hot-beds equable, an occupation not naturally appreciated by company). But knowing the country as we do, can you possibly consider March a good month for exploiting real estate? Especially a March like the present, that starts by being snowbound in the fields, and so sloppy in the roads that the wheels of anything but father’s stanhope are mired and won’t go round, while down in the valley the light sleigh almost turned into a boat and floated this morning.
“There is nothing attractive of any kind that I know of for sale, and if there were, it would repel people at this season. Even the Cortrights’ trim, lovely house, standing between the great oaks, looked, this afternoon, like a belated and bedraggled straggler, propped up between two policemen waiting for the patrol wagon to come for it. Besides, at best, this Mrs. Terence Donelly is looking for the impossible with true Western fervour.
“One must grow up with a place and feel rooted in its earth to love it in March; she won’t have the ghost of an idea what the garden means to us by looking at it now, for it isn’t there, only its spirit, and that, like everything dead, is invisible except to the eyes of those that love.
“What is Vesta like? How old is she, and who were her people?” I asked, for optimistic Evan was beginning to look depressed, which is something wholly against the rule.
Terence Donelly was a college chum of Evan’s at Oxford, and is as fascinating and warm-hearted as only a well-bred Irishman knows how to be. He had visited us many times before the Western trip that had buckled into double harness a spirited roadster who had travelled straight and true in single harness without either check-rein or blinders for nearly forty years. Consequently, Mrs. Terence was an object of an interest that became intense upon the thought of meeting her.
“She is small, her hair is light brown and her eyes flash and dance so that I don’t remember anything else about them,” said Evan, slowly, shutting his eyes, as if searching his memory for an accurate picture. “I happen to know that she is twenty-six, though she does not look it by five or six years. I haven’t made up my mind about her disposition; one moment she has an almost pathetic expression as though she needed sympathy and protection, and then her eyes blaze, and she runs her hand through her front hair until it stands on end, and she reminds one of something as unapproachable as a coil of slender live wire.
“Her people? Her father was a Californian, but her mother was an Eastern woman by descent, the daughter of a Judge Morland who came from Massachusetts, and, like many another boy, tired of farm life, taught school to get his education, and then by the same process worked his way out West. Terry has tried to look up the family to please his wife, who seems very lonely in spite of all her independence, but there is no one left. That is why I thought you might cheer her up from the woman’s side of things if they settled here. She is unconventional enough to satisfy you, I’ll warrant, and would be delighted to go up in the attic on a wet day and dream pussy willows, and the fact that hers may be the western species of the tree would be a sort of tonic for the dreams.”
“You must have said something to Terry about his wife’s coming here,” I announced, when he had ended.
“I may have,” Evan answered. “The poor fellow is worried because she is getting restless, and hasn’t a woman friend in New York, and I thought if she could meet the Cortrights and Bradfords, Sukey Latham and the rest, the air might clear in a twinkling.”
“I’ll write to her to-night; imagine you and me, married only a year and living in Chicago or San Francisco, father dead, and not even Aunt Lot or Martha Saunders to turn either against or to, and no home to which to return! What a wretched time you would be having with me! Nevertheless, upon your head be the failure to find in this neighbourhood the ideal house built around a magnet.”
“Oh, if you once get her here something will be sure to turn up,” said Evan. “She may find a few bits of old furniture, or a bargain in a jug or spoon up at Tucker’s curiosity shop; he’s had a dull season, and the Donellys are keen about getting old Colony things so that when they find the house they may have the fittings, as they seem to take it for granted the house will match.”
Father, who had come in while we were talking, stood with his back to the study fire rubbing his hands together as if it were midwinter, while the sleepy dogs only roused enough to wag their tails drowsily, take a comfortable yawn that arched their backs, easing the muscles, then settled down again.
“Is it thawing or freezing?” I asked, crossing the hall to him.
“Both,” he answered, laughing, “one overhead, the other underfoot; a fine climate this, to test the vigour of the New England people. I’ve just come down from the Dearborn farm from visiting old man Becker, who is racked by grippy pains. He says there is more snow in the south meadow than any spring since the old deacon died, and that is forty years and he reckons March is ‘no good to anybody but for plotting and planning.’ He gave me this handbill yesterday, which owing to the weather, it’s several days in advance of its being posted. I was reminded of it by hearing the words ‘bargains in jugs and old spoons’;” and father pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his side pocket, which, being spread upon the table, took the form of a tree poster that read as follows:—
“VANDOO! PART I
“The entire goods and chattels belonging to the estate of Sarah Dearborn deceased, will be disposed of on the premises by public vandoo on the 12th of March, or if stormy, the first fair day thereafter. Goods will go to the highest bidder and must be paid for at time of purchase and removed within two days.
“A list of the property may be seen on the premises.
“A grand chance for the friends of the late estimable lady to obtain souvenirs.”
“VANDOO! PART II
“On Friday, March 15, the real estate belonging to the estate of the late Sarah Dearborn, as follows: Parcel I consisting of one two-story oak-framed dwelling with attic, wood-shed, and buttery, two barns and smaller out-buildings, and seventeen acres of land, the same comprising the homestead and to be sold together. Parcel II, ten acres of woodland situated on the Ridge Road, Parcel III, ten acres of salt meadow, Parcel IV, forty acres of plowed and grass land being known as the South Meadows. These pieces will be sold together or separate to suit the bidder.
“Grand chance to secure high land for building lots, with a land boom and a trolley only a few miles away and coming nearer! Come one! come all!
“These two important vandoos are under the management of Joshua Hanks, licensed auctioneer and attorney for the Executors.
“Oaklands, March, 19—.”
“Here is something, I’m sure, that will interest Mrs. Terry,” said Evan, who had followed me; “naturally she will not care for the house, for it is low and rambling, but it will be a chance to go to an auction sale conducted with strict hill-country etiquette, unless I’m mistaken, for even the leading word, ‘Vendue,’ is spelled according to the local pronunciation. It is always as good as a play to hear Hanks conduct a sale, he is all commercial bathos. Don’t you remember going with me, Barbara, to an auction on the Ridge where some one complained that a certain cow was damaged, and not sound as represented because she had a broken horn, and Hanks gave a thrilling account of how the horn was broken and tried to prove added value from the happening?”
“But, father,” I asked, “why is the Dearborn farm to be sold? I thought Miss Sallie had pinched and denied herself even ordinary comforts the last half of her life to leave the place, with a little sum for keeping it up, to some grandnephews.”
“It is one of the many cases that come to us all, and especially into the life of a country doctor, that prove how foolish it is for people to make plans for those who come after them, or pinch or save beyond the ordinary bounds of prudence,” answered father. “I knew Sallie Dearborn for upwards of fifty years. The Lord intended her for a woman to love and be loved, yet a streak of obstinate martyrdom from first to last made her lose her chances of happiness one after another, because to accept them would interfere with some elaborate and prudent plan she had made either for indefinite posterity, or more often merely on general principles of thrift.
“After the old people died, they say that Sallie had a chance to marry a promising young fellow and go out into the world, but to have withdrawn her interest in the land at that time would have hindered her two brothers, and after a controversy that no one understood, the lover went away.
“Presently one brother died, and the other, having married a delicate wife, broke away from the farm to go to the southwest. For years Sallie toiled and scrimped to pay him his portion and keep the place of five generations ‘in the family.’ She has even paid her farmer Becker and his wife with post obits, that she might leave a money equivalent of the farm in the bank so that the two nephews might have equal portions without selling the homestead and furnishings. The first choice going to the elder, with many directions as to the handing of it down being left to the one who takes it and its quaint furnishings.
“Now, as it turns out, neither man wishes the farm or fixings, nor has sufficient interest in their fate even to bring them here to oversee affairs, and everything available is to be sold without reserve and turned into money!
“Deborah Becker, who lived with Miss Sallie as companion more than helper these forty years, is almost heart-broken, and told me this afternoon that such a happening had never entered Miss Sallie’s head, for that not long before her last illness, she even sent for samples of wall-paper, labelled and put them away in the old mahogany desk of the Squire’s that always stood in the best room; this paper for the guest room, that for the parlour, as a guide for the doing over of the house when ‘one of the boys’ should take it.”
“Timothy Saunders’ saying is true, ‘The future’s a kittle mare that travels best her ain gate and lacking both bit and bridle,’?” I said, “but yet it is pathetic when one has sacrificed everything to a sort of old country land-pride, to have it come to naught. Didn’t she leave you a letter of some sort, father, that was to remain sealed a year until everything was settled?”
“Yes, Barbara, a sealed letter enclosing a key; the key of the old desk, which the will says is to be disposed of according to directions given me. I hope it may give rise to no complications. Who that saw Sallie Dearborn during the last half of her life would dream that she was once full of woman’s romance crossed with chivalry? These have seen her grim, calculating, measuring every egg or berry that she sold; sending her weekly paper to the Bridgeton Hospital, but first cutting the white margins therefrom, and rolling them into lamplighters to save matches at two cents a box!”
With the prospective “Vandoo” as a motive, I invited Terry Donelly for over a Sunday and his wife for a week’s visit. When she came, of a Saturday after dusk, I found, as Evan had said, that one moment she was tender and almost piteously feminine, so that I was impelled to take her in my arms as I would a child, while in a moment of animation, a flush would mantle her cheeks, too thin for her years, the gray eyes would flash, little bright glints play about her hair, until she was, indeed, like a bundle of lithe, live wires.
At such moments, Terry’s laughing eyes would grow grave, and the banter, which was one of his charms, die on his lips; that she was restless and he apprehensive even through the spell of strong affection, there was no doubt, and on Monday, when Terry left her with me, there was something appealing in his glance and the grip he gave my hand.
The day was fairly pleasant out-of-doors in that a frozen crust made good walking, and, arm in arm, Mrs. Terry and I explored my haunts; I pointed to the stakes and trellises where the garden had been and would be again, and for a moment we sat upon the seat where the “Mother Tree” had been and looked down the walk that had bordered that first garden of the long ago. Would she understand from these bare outlines the why of it, the voiceless potency of that which bound me?
If she did she said nothing until afternoon, when I took her to my attic corner, and building a log fire in the Franklin stove, drew the dumpy old lounge before it and called the dogs to soothe us with their sleepy influence.
At first Mrs. Terry sat upright, hands clasped about her knees, gazing at the fire, and breathing quickly.
“How I love that,” she said; “we have not had these fires since I left the ranch, and I’ve often slept out by one as high as the wall when we’ve been on camping trips.”
Then gradually her breath came slower and more evenly, and she dropped back half against the sweet clover pillows and half against my shoulder.
“When we looked over that rolling icy field beyond the garden this morning, with the dazzling light on the snow, just as it is at home, and I shut my eyes, I could see the ranch, and Uncle Sandy and the boys, and fat Mrs. Malone, the housekeeper, so plainly that I almost put out my hand to touch them. There’s something queer about March; lots of the range cattle get through almost until spring and then give out, and the boys that have held out well all winter often go nearly blind of a sudden. I guess it’s because by March you’ve braced up and stood all you can of winter, and because it’s called spring, you lose nerve and can’t pull the strap up another hole for a fresh grip.”
Then with a sudden movement, burying her face in my shoulder, she half whispered: “That’s the way it is with me; ever since I left the ranch, I’ve kept myself braced so that Terry should not know how homesick I feel. At first I thought it would pass, then I thought if I had a place where I could strike root the pain might wear away, and so I’ve hunted and hunted, but now, to-day, coming here and feeling some one else’s home feeling, but from outside, it’s like March snow to my eyes, I can’t bear it; there’s not another inch to pull up and the saddle girths are slipping, slipping under me, and there’s no help. I must go back!
“I was born in March, I met Terry in March, the next March we were married, and now, oh, Mrs. Evan, unless you can help me and hold me, we shall part, Terry and I, for no fault, and I shall go back to Uncle Sandy in March! No, don’t look at me so hardly, I can feel your eyes right through my hair: you, who have always been at home, can’t judge me. It isn’t that I don’t love Terry better than any one else, but the earth loves you, too, and sometimes it won’t let go. I could not know it would be so until I came away; no one could. Some day it will all be changed, this coming of a man and taking the woman away; he will come to her and stay, for home is more to the one who stays in to keep it.”
As she leaned close to me, I could feel the beating of her heart and with it another sound, a sort of feeble echo as it were. Then I gathered her up and held her close, and told her of those two first years and of my own separation from home and country.
“But after that you came back,” she cried, “and Terry can’t go back with me; we thrashed that out in the beginning, for even Uncle Sandy said there was no opening for a lawyer in a grazing country, because every one settles their own disputes quick, unless they are big enough for the government to butt in, and anyway a lawyer isn’t popular. Well, at last, thank God, I’ve found some one to understand it, some one who has lived through that feeling that pulls you back to where you started.” And Mrs. Terry, clasping her arms around my neck, fell to crying, not passionately, but comfortably, that blessed outlet that Nature has given us women in compensation for much pain we may not avoid.
Gradually the sobs stopped, she was asleep. So, laying her carefully back on the pillows and covering her with an old afghan, I left her to the dreams bred by the singing of the firewood accompanied by a little, whistling snore from Peter, the old hound.
The morning of the sale at the Dearborn farm was mild, as though March was preparing to go out like a lamb that scented green pastures. Two days of rain had washed the snow from the open places, and though the roads ran mud, yet it was the mud of promise.
We made an early start, that Mrs. Terry might have a chance to see the few bits of old furniture likely to attract one who had no association with the family or place; for the Dearborns were of the plain Yankee stock that, aside from a few heirlooms kept most of the time behind drawn blinds, had furnishings of the plainest sort. There was a good tall clock with a ship atop of the pendulum sailing toward a port it never reached, a handsome claw-footed table of mahogany, a chest of drawers, and a dozen chairs of the same wood, patterned diversely, a four-post bed, carved with some skill, a Davenport sofa with carved ends, a hooded cradle, a low-boy, and a work table with heavy brass handles. The silver table ware, worn thin by use, was of a slender pattern, the ends of the handles of spoons and forks being abruptly angled; while of china, outside of the modern ware in daily use, there was a tea-set of Lowestoft with its odd small-necked tea-caddy and helmet cream-pitcher, and a more complete service of blue and white India porcelain.
A bevy of neighbours and one or two dealers, including old Pop Tucker, were buzzing about these things, but what seemed to attract Mrs. Terry far more, were the pitiful little personal articles that belonged intimately to the life of Sallie Dearborn, and that she had never doubted would pass either to her own kin, or, if worthless, be destroyed instead of being exposed for criticism and sale, as the law ordains in the settling of an estate where no friendly hand intervenes.
Worn table-linen tied into bundles, underclothing, much darned stockings, shoes, a well-worn Bible filled with little memory markers bearing names and dates, a book filled with household recipes copied in a stiff, exact handwriting, and lastly, resting on the seat of a chintz-covered chair, as if its owner had left it there for a brief moment while she went to other tasks, was a deep work-basket, big as a peck measure. The inside pockets of this basket were filled with spools, needle-cases, tapes and all such gear; the outside bags held bits of half-finished work, and knitting, the rusty needles sticking from a ball of home-dyed blue-gray yarn, just as they had been laid away; while a thimble of an odd pineapple pattern hung on the top of a long darning needle that occupied the middle of the pincushion.
“This is simply cruel,” whispered Mrs. Terry, the electric wire look reappearing as she rumpled her hair and held the basket close to her as if to protect it. “There is nothing in this basket worth a nickel, unless that dingy thimble is gold, and to have it put up and sold to some one of those old cats yonder, who have been going about pinching and smelling everything, not that they mean to buy, but just to see, as that one with the green porcupine topknot in her hat said a minute ago, ‘what dear Sallie had that set her up so.’
“A lot of a woman’s secrets drop into her work-basket, and mix up with her pens and writing things when she’s alone, and it’s wicked to sell any of these things. I’m going to buy this basket, Mrs. Evan, and wrap it up in a pink paper and bury it if you’ll lend me a spade and the ground isn’t frozen too hard; if not, I’ll burn it.
“I mean to buy that old Bible, too, with all the births and deaths written in. The porcupine woman said she would buy it if it didn’t bring over a dollar, because she hadn’t had a chance to ‘leaf it over well’ and there were dates in it she wanted to write out and there might be letters tucked in somewhere! From what I’ve overheard, Miss Sallie must have had a lover fifty or sixty years ago, who went away, and as no one ever knew why, her friends’ children are still curious about the matter.”
Mr. Hanks’ vigorous pounding on the table in the kitchen, and the ringing of a bell, gathered about him an audience of nearly one hundred people, and the selling began, room by room; for, to save confusion, the large pieces of furniture were sold where they stood.
During the morning the sale dragged, the dealers had everything their own way, and in spite of Mr. Hanks’ pathetic reminiscences concerning each article, from an old pew stove to a five-cent factory-made wooden spoon, the derelicts that did not receive a single bid would have filled a wagon. The afternoon session began in the best room, wherein was the four-poster, the cradle, a good mirror, the work-basket and the tall desk, the fate of which was contained in Miss Sallie’s letter to father.
As we stood in the doorway, a flood of sunlight, coming in through the small, iridescent window-panes, gilded the dust that lay upon everything and lent warmth to the quaint buff wall-paper, festooned with loops of bright flowers and birds of paradise; a brave paper in its day and one that had faded with dignity.
“I don’t know quite what there is about this room,” whispered Mrs. Terry, “but bare as it is and cold, it seems familiar and somehow more homelike to me than any other I have ever seen; I wonder could I have lived in it in dreams?”
Before I could answer, one of the swift changes passed over her, and stepping forward, she said in the perfectly clear, unemotional voice of a business man, “Mr. Hanks, as it is growing late and I must go, would you object to selling the contents of this room as it stands? Wall-paper and all, if it is possible to get it off?” I was amazed and a little worried, for I knew nothing of the length of Mrs. Terry’s purse.
The country folks gasped and whispered among themselves; they did not wish to be cheated out of a moment’s excitement. The dealers began a series of mental calculations, but no real objection being made, Mr. Hanks stroked his chin a moment, muttered something about its being possible that the wall paper being fastened to the house might be real estate, and then said, “The bed must be a separate lot, the desk as is known is not for the sale, but the rest of the fittings I will put up in bulk ‘as is,’ madam, which is a learned and professional term you must know for the way they seem to be to the casual eye, not what perhaps the brush of fancy might paint them.”
The green porcupine lady shut her mouth with the snap of a turtle, murmuring something about the widow’s mite being disdained, as she saw that both the Bible, and the basket containing the thimble that was suspected of being gold, would vanish from her horizon.
Of course I was in no way responsible for Mrs. Terry, yet for one who confessed to being on the eve of running away, to buy a wagon load of furniture seemed hardly rational. When, ten minutes later, Mr. Hanks, after selling the bed and contents of the room for one hundred and fifty dollars, was fairly beaming at his success, and I realized that the furniture must be removed within two days, my heart sank.
Not so Mrs. Terry’s; after giving Hanks a very substantial deposit upon her purchase, she tucked the Bible under one arm, and hugging the basket to her breast, made ready to go.
That evening, after supper, she spread Bible, basket, and herself upon the rug before the den fire and began examining the contents of the old work-basket as a child does a picture puzzle, saying na?vely, “It’s no harm to look at the things before I bury them,” whereat Evan heaved a sigh, and I knew that he was mentally weighing the stability of Terry Donelly’s marriage, though at the same time his eyes twinkled with amusement.
“See,” she continued, “here’s a finished sock wrapped up in paper with something peppery, and the other is all done but a bit of the tip of the toe. I think I’ll finish it if I can get the rust off the needles; yes, it rubs off and the rug polishes them nicely,—there seems to be enough yarn on the ball to finish the toe, though it’s rather mothy; it looks ages old. Can I knit? Oh, yes, I used to knit long stockings for Uncle Sandy out of heather yarn. I knit a pair of golf stockings for Terry last fall, but one foot was shorter than the other, and he said it always drew up his big toe and distracted his attention when he was ‘putting.’?”
“That carries me back a long way,” said father, who had come across the hall, newspaper in hand, for a little visit and to exchange cigars with Evan, a nightly custom, as he watched Mrs. Terry knitting in the firelight. “When I was a young fellow, not only the old folks, but all the country-bred girls learned to knit as soon as their skirts went down and their hair was put up. Then, when the attentions of one of the young men who took them to and from meeting and singing-school were recognized as serious, when he became ‘steady company’ and privileged to sit in the best room and hold the skein of yarn for her to wind, the girl with many blushes would ask him to write his name with hers on a bit of paper, which folded up, made the centre of a ball of yarn from which she straightway began to knit Him a pair of socks to prove her housewifery.”
“What a well-packed idea!” cried Mrs. Terry, rising to her knees, “and perhaps, who knows, the name brought good luck and helped her get both feet alike!”
“I’m not sure about that,” laughed father, “but I do remember that there was a lot of curiosity about those papers and sometimes a girl would steal her rival’s knitting ball to find whose name was inside, and feuds came of it that were worse than tangled yarn.”
“Do you suppose there could possibly be a paper in this ball?” Mrs. Terry cried suddenly, as she squeezed it tight; “it isn’t all yarn, there’s something inside and it isn’t a spool. No, I won’t unwind it, I’ll knit this last inch out,” and the fingers flew, while it seemed as though her strange hair stretched out to look, and pulling away from its pins fairly danced in the firelight.
As the stocking ate up the yarn, I found myself getting nearer to Mrs. Terry, father drew his chair close, and Evan leaned against the fireplace.
“Why are we all so breathlessly interested?” I asked, addressing the ball of yarn as much as anything.
“Because,” answered father, “of the possibility of unearthing romance, and twist, distort, and disguise it as we will, simple love is the most interesting thing to every one of us.”
“Last round,” called Evan, who was watching so closely that Mrs. Terry’s fingers trembled nervously.
The row was finished and bound off, though the rotten yarn had to be pieced three times in the process; then she began to unwind the wisp that remained. Yes, there was a piece of paper inside, brittle and yellow.
Slowly she opened it, for it threatened to tear in shreds, and read in an awestruck voice, “?‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all my days. March the 20th, 1842. Sarah Dearborn and Richard Morland’!”
“Richard Morland was my mother’s father!” she said, scarcely above a whisper; “how did his name come here, Dr. Russell?”
Father held the paper to the lamp, scarcely less excited than Mrs. Terry, who stood with clasped hands and a strange, searching expression in her eyes as they followed him.
“Richard Morland, yes, that is the name,” said father, making sure of every letter. “He once taught school at the old centre village. It was before my time, but it is a matter of record, and some of the old people still speak of him. As I remember the story, the school-teacher always boarded at the Dearborn farm.”
“Then my grandfather once lived in the house where we were, to-day, and probably slept in the four-posted bed and saw the parrots perched in the flowers on the wall the first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Terry said slowly, turning her back to the room and speaking, as it were, to the fire.
“It is very strange, because when I went into the room, it did not seem new to me. I, too, must sleep in the great bed and wake up with the sunshine on that old, old paper.”
“It is a pity that it couldn’t be taken off the wall so that all the fittings might be kept together,” I said thoughtlessly. But the young woman wheeled around swiftly, and putting a hand on either of my shoulders held me off, at the same time that her expression drew me close.
“That paper shall never come off,” she said. “If grandpa had married Miss Sallie, she would have been my grandmother and I should have belonged in the Dearborn homestead. It’s too late for that now, but I’m going to buy the place and manage it that way. Don’t you see, Mrs. Evan? I’ve found my reason, the reason that I wanted to make me stay somewhere until I had taken root and couldn’t get away. Then perhaps I may find out something more from the old place to make me hug it tighter. Anyway, the south pasture is just the place to turn out horses.
“Don’t you think, Dr. Russell, that they might be willing to sell before next week? Please may I use the telephone? I’ll call up Terry, he will be so relieved! And then I must get to work and find out why Miss Sallie wasn’t my grandmother.”
Now the time had come for father to open Miss Sallie’s letter, which said that—the desk and its contents were to become the property of the owner of the house!
“The desk and all the wall-papers Miss Sallie chose for the refurnishings!” cried Mrs. Terry; “it’s actually like having some one to share the responsibility of it all. Ah, you see, Mrs. Evan, I told you that dreary old March is my lucky month; another thirty days and it might have been too late.”
The day that the deed was transferred, father handed Mrs. Terry the key of the old secretary. Whispering to me, “I don’t want even Terry to come up yet, only you must be with me when I open it, for you understand,” she literally pulled me up the narrow stairs.
Dragging up the big arm-chair, she seated herself in it and turned the key slowly in the creaking lock. As the flap fell back, revealing a row of pigeon-holes and two shallow drawers, she whispered, “I don’t know exactly whether I’m opening a treasure chest or a grave!”
After some hesitation, she pulled out a drawer and took from it a bundle of yellow papers, folded lengthwise and tied with a faded blue ribbon. “?‘Letters from R. M. to S. D., preserved to show my kin how good a man their foolish aunt lost through thinking that land could weigh in the balance with love,’?” read Mrs. Terry, reddening deeply; “and here is a picture of grandpa cut from black paper, and a queer curl of hair. Ah, now I see where my inquisitive hair comes from.
“?‘A letter of advice to my kin if they think to marry, and a request.’?” Mrs. Terry read this slowly to herself, saying as she did so, “I hope she wants something I can do for her.”
There was a long silence, so long that I looked up rather anxiously at last.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She wants grandpa’s name to be given to the first child that is born in this house,” said Mrs. Terry, in an awestruck tone, “and that seems to me like a loaf and fish miracle, for I was so afraid that Terry would want to call him for his own people, and his father’s name was Patrick Dennis! Oh, how nice it is to have even a might-have-been grandmother to shoulder such responsibilities!” And once more she threw herself into my arms as she had done the afternoon in the attic, peeping over my shoulder at the hooded mahogany cradle into which the beams of the victorious snow-quelling March sun were shining.
“Something seems to have turned up, or else we have all gone snow-blind,” said Evan that night.