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She won't be likely to do any better." Jerome stared at his mother in utter bewilderment. "Mother, are you out of your senses?" he gasped. "I don't know why I am," said she. "Don't you know that Doctor Prescott would turn Lawrence out of house and home if he thought he was going to marry Elmira?" "I guess she's good enough for him. You can run down your own sister all you want to, Jerome Edwards."
It was just a week from that day that Jerome and Elmira, being seated in meeting, saw Lucina enter with her parents and her visiting friends. Jerome's heart leaped up at the sight of Lucina, then sank before that of the young man following her up the aisle. "He is going to marry her; she has forgotten me," he thought, directly.
Yet it had been simple enough, as paths to strange conclusions always are. He had returned home from Squire Eben's that morning, changed his clothes, and resumed his work in the garden. Elmira had questioned him, but he gave her no information. He had an instinct, which had been born in him, of secrecy towards womankind.
"How far are you going?" asked Lawrence, of Elmira flitting along beside his dancing mare. "Oh, a little way," said she, evasively. "How far?" There was something of his father's insistence in Lawrence's voice. "To Granby," replied Elmira then, and tried to speak on unconcernedly. She was ashamed to let him know how far she had planned to walk because of her poverty.
"A corpse!" says Elmira, dropping her coffee which she was carrying home from the gineral store and post-office. "Danny, what do you mean?" I seen I was to blame somehow, and I wisht then I hadn't said nothing about Hank being a corpse. And I made up my mind I wouldn't say nothing more.
But all the same they was mad she said she didn't want any tea, for they all wanted some and didn't feel free without she took it too. Which she said she would after they'd coaxed a while and made her see her duty. So they all goes out to the kitchen, bringing along some of the best room chairs, Elmira coming too, and me tagging along behind.
She went out, but turned back, and added, harshly, "I saw Jake Noyes this afternoon on my way home. He was coming here to ask you to go up to Doctor Prescott's this evening; he wants to see you. If he says anything about me, you can tell him that as long as he and you do your duty, I am satisfied. I ask nothing more, not even his precious son." Elmira rushed across the entry, with a dry sob.
Then Banger explained the situation to her; and as she solemnly protested that she had not been in Elmira, Banger was about to conclude that he had been the victim of a joke, when it suddenly occurred to him that maybe it was the aunt of Professor Banger. He sent out to investigate the matter, and found that the conjecture was correct.
Another time, in a desperate resolve to meet a lecture engagement, I walked across the railroad trestle at Elmira, New York, and when I was halfway over I heard shouts of warning to turn back, as a train was coming. The trestle was very high at that point, and I realized that if I turned and faced an oncoming train I would undoubtedly lose my nerve and fall.
Elmira, fluttering like a pink flower on the back of the bay mare, who really ambled along gently enough with Lawrence's hand on her bridle, journeyed for the next mile as one in a happy dream. She was actually incredulous of the reality of it all. She was half afraid that the jolt of the bay mare would wake her from slumber; she kept her eyes closed in the recesses of her sun-bonnet.
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