Neighborhood Stories

the days not needing other names: Washday, Ironday, Mend-day, Bakeday, Freeday, Scrubday, and Sunday—that was how they went. With them nothing interfered without it wa

omehow kind of separate from her grieving. Her grieving was done with her feelings, but her mourning was done more physical, like

158} “Getting connect’ or getting buried,” she said, “them are both religious occasions

nless it was to a house—picnics, where you sat around on the ground, she said, was too informal for them in mourning. Church meetings she went to, but n

rried now than she was when Uncle Eb

twenty and woman-pretty and beau-interested; and Amos More, that worked in Eppleby’s feed store and didn’t hev no folks, he’d been shining round the Merriman house some, and Harriet had been shining back, modest

stand it to hev sparkin’ an’ courtin’ goin’ on all around me. An’ if I should hev to hev a

, she give all her time to her aunt, looking like a little lonesome candle that noth

er, but that none of us ever sees. This cousin, Maria Carpenter, was one of our most intimate myths. Next to the Fire Chief himself, Mis’ Merriman give the most of her time in conversation{160} to her. She was real dressy—she used to send Mis’ Merriman samples of her clothes and their trimmings, and we all f

I run in to Mis’ Merriman’s on my way home from town just after Harriet had b

is down! Maria Carpenter is a-co

e Chief? Company ain’t no great chore now

at me, sad, ov

t show her off. There won’t be a livin’ place I can t

d{161}idn’t happen so’s you could

out like her feelings

dress, expectin’ it. She knows it’s past the first year, an’ she’ll think I’ll feel free to entertain. I donno but I ought to telegraph her: Pleased to see you but don’t you expect a company. Wouldn’t that be more open an’ aboveboard? Oh, dea

a signal to somebody. And all of a sudden I knew it was half past ’leven and that Amos{162} More went home early to his dinner at the boarding house so’s to get back at twelve-thirty, when Eppleby went for his, and that nine to ten it was Amos that Harriet was waving at. I

ire Chief Merriman jum

any,” she says, “an’ not come in the room? A hostess has to be in the kitchen most of the time anyway

r the refreshments are served. I remember once she was so faint she had to go back to the kitchen and eat her own supper, and we didn’t say good-by to her at all, except as some o

quiet time. Then when they come, you can stay in the room with Maria at first an’ get her introduced. An’ after that the party can go ahead on its own legs, just as well with

lping her, and she got her invitations out. They was on some black bordered paper and envelopes that Mis’ Fire Chief had had

on, Four o’clock Sharp, Thimbles. Six o’

1

ar to a winter company in Friendship Village. Nobody entertains much of any in the winter—its a chore to get the parlor cleaned and het, and it’s cold for ’em to lay off their things, and you can’t think up much that’s tasty for refreshments, being it’s too

reakfast, and there was Harriet Wells, bare-headed and a shawl around her, and looking summer-swe

’t come over now so’s to get an early start. She’s afra

ght and had my cake all in the oven by 6 A.M. Come in while I eat my breakfast and I’ll run

t for two days—not since the invitations went out o’ the house—an’ last night she

m loving the dead so strong that I’m ugly to the living.’ Bu

had said it. But I, and all Friendship Village, knew it for the truth. And we all wanted to be delivered from people that’s so crazy to be moral and proper themselves, in life or in mourning, that they w

ng about now on his way to his work. When he goes by

blushing up like a pink lamp s

oon. I want he should come over to Mis’ Fire Chief’s an’ chop ice an help turn freezer.” (We was going to feed ’em ice cream even if it was winter.) “I’m getti

p on something. I called to him, and pretended not to notice Harriet’s little look into the clock-door looking-glass, and when he come in I ’mos

as if saying her name was

et says, rose-pink and look

n’t seem to know I was in the room. He went straight u

n’-room window? Yes, livin’. It’s the only time I’m alive all day long—just when I see you the

at can I do, Amos

e—if you love me enough,” s

ays Hettie, firm; “I ain’t that

I love you on account of everything you do. And I

wn-town, Amos, and get the stuff on this list I’ve made out, and then you come on

When Amos got back with the things I’d sent for she didn’t seem half to sense it was him I was sending out in the woodshed t

says, in a sort of w

utton up your shoes. I’ve got every move of the mornin

the helper and expect the party to come off at all. And I never see any living hostess more upset than

rn is dry—we’ve hed to pump water to the neighbors. Not a hen has cackled this livelong mornin’ in the coop. The milkman couldn’t only leave me three quarts instead of four, though ordered ahead. An’ I feel like death—I feel like death,” says she, “part on account of the Chief—ain’t i

I, “you go and lay down

for the company to lay their hats off, an’ the

I, “go off an

etery,” says she, “an’ that I

over your head and eyes, and you set still and

if she didn’t keep still I’d bake the ice cream

y sight! They was both working away, but Amos was looking down at her more’n to his work, and Harriet was looking up at him like he was all of it—and the whole air was pleasant with something s

is’ Fire Chief’s looking like death in

g up one corner and

rs—only white ones. You’ll have to write the place cards—my hand shakes so I don’t dare

been up early that morning making—it was a set piece from the Chief’s funeral, a big goblet, turned bottom side up, done in white geraniums with “He is Near” in purple eve

solemn, “to make the occasion do honor t

around, when Amos come to the shed door to tell me the freezer wouldn’t turn no more, and was it broke or was the cream

ys she, “what y

hasty; “I had to have

an’ entertainin’ goin’ on in the Chief’s house

e some man’s help out here th

you’re all against me but t

“You go and put flowers in the chambers and leave the rest to me. Put your mind,” I told her, “on the surprise you’ve got for y

her off

st thing, and I come back from my dinner towards three and tiptoes through the house so’s not to disturb Mis’ Fire Chief if she was resting, and I went into the pantry and begun cutting and spreading bread. I hadn’t been there but a litt

te muslin and was looking like angels, and more. And—“I won’t,” says A

n to have you call me ‘d

an’t nobody make me feel ‘dear’ is wicked, not when it means as d

gether,” says H

don’t know when I’ll see you ag

d if they know I’m here, that’ll spoil this time. I’d better stay where I am, still, with my thoughts on my sandwiches.” And that was what I d

“that this was our house. An’ our kitchen. An’ that

ight to pretend that way with Aunt Hettie

, an’ it comes out like that. She don’t care—really. At least not anything like the way she thinks she does. Now don’t

yet, oh, so willing,—“if it was th

e: that I love you so much that the world ain’t the world without you. But I wa

answered—Hettie’s dimples was lik

s, you ain’t filled the water pail. An’ I’

hen when I’d brought ’em.

inner?’ ” said Hettie, demure. Bu

. “Oh, Hettie—don’t it seem like heaven to think

ing is all right some of the time; but

does. But it seems like ea

, “marry me. Don’t let’

h a wicked word,—“dear, I’d marry you this afternoon if it wasn’t f

e life lay all that way. And I was just coming out of the butt’ry with a pan of thin sandwiches ready for the black ribbins, when I heard a

g like a bereavement, “Cousin Maria has fell an

t, Cousin Maria for surprise and hostess in one, Mis’ Merriman not figgering on ap

her best black with the crêpe cuffs. “Oh,”{177} she says, “it’s a judgment upon me.

ome went marching up the stairs. And at the same minute Amos come in from the shed with the dasher out o

n the parlor and do it all just like you’d planned. And in place of Maria Carpenter and the surprise you’d meant,” says I, “give ’em another surprise.

ared up to me, a

ere the very last gatherin’ was the funeral of the

got to be the same purpose, or we might just as well, and a good sight better, be dead. And a part of that purpose is to keep His world a-going, and that can’t be done, as I see it, by looking back over our shoulders to the dead that’s gone, however dear, and forgetting the living that’s all around us, yearning and thirsting an

e she was a-sitting. “I ain’t never supposed I was l

nd my notion, and the notion of most of Friendship Village, {179}it’s

to be the laughin’-stock to-day,”

for form’s sake, “if Mis’ Merri

the organ and the benediction an

rose, but yet like a rose n

is’ Fire Ch

up her face. “I don’t know what to do,” s

to do that none of us thought of dress anyhow. It was four o’clock by then, and folks had been stomping in “past the bell” and marching up-stairs and laying off their things—being as everybody knows what’s what in Friendship Village and don’t hev to b

that. We can’t have black ribb

n. I ain’t superstitious, same as some. Uncle’s centerpiece an’ his willow on the tablecloth an’ his blackribbin sandwich

n that Hettie said. And Mis’ Merriman, she looked at ’em then, grateful and even resigned

loved the way they was all used to each other, and talking natural about crochet patterns and recipes for oatmeal cookies and what’s good to keep hands from chapping—not one of ’em putting on or setting their best foot forwards or trying to act their best, same as they might with company, but just being themse

pose is goin’ to happen? Oh, they can

s and recipes and lotions all just simmered down into one surprised and glad and loving buzz of wond

anding by it, whirled around and see Mis’ Fire Chief Merriman peeking through the crack to her guests. And Amos swung open the door wide, and he grab

uncle an’ mine an’ your husband,—wouldn’t want you stayi

is’ Fire Chief she wipes her eyes, and she left ’em shake her hands; and though she wasn’t all converted, it was her and not me that a