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The gray-haired seaman was comparatively vigorous still, but his sea-faring days were over; and while he had put by a sum sufficient to keep him, his good wife, and "Matildy Jane" in comfort, this unlooked for addition to the family, helpless and crippled as the grandchildren were, would be too great a drain upon his little fund.
"I've felt that way a little myself, Matildy," confessed the watcher in a scared whisper. "I knew it, Mattie; I knew you'd know how I felt. Things have been better for you. You ain't had to live in an old log house all your life, an' work yourself to skin an' bone for a man you don't respect nor like." "Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake!
But the weary woman, lying so still in her old room in her father's house, had a heavier cross. Her mother tiptoed into the room, the morning after her arrival, and stood beside her until she opened her eyes. "Elick is outside, Matildy. Shall I tell him to come in?" She shook her head, and closed her eyes again wearily. The old woman went out, and confronted her gray-haired husband helplessly.
She lived about with her children. The white folks all called her 'Aunt Matildy' Tucker. She was a small woman, long hair and high cheek bones. She wore a shawl big as a sheet purty nigh all time and smoked a pipe. I was born in Batesville. "My mother spoke of her one long journey on the steamboat and stagecoach. That was when she was brought to Arkansas. It made a memorable picture in her mind.
"I guess I'll change my clothes, Matildy, and go over t' the church this afternoon and meet the Session." She felt the burden of years lifted from her shoulders. She said simply, "I'm real glad of it, Elick. You'll find two shirts in the middle drawer. I think the under one's the best." Matilda went back to her work, and thought how the stain would be wiped away.
Livingstone," she said, when apologizing to mother for the captain's share in the late escapade; "but, bless you, dear lady, he's more of a child than little Daisy herself, when he's out of his usual bearings. I think he's best off at home, with Jabez and Matildy Jane to look after him, when I can't." And she sighed heavily, as if the responsibility were too much for her.
Matildy give me fits for not stayin' upstairs until the startin' gun was fired, but I told her that, between her with her eyes full of tears and Olindy Cahoon with her mouth full of pins, 'twas no place for a male man. So I cleared out till everything was shipshape.
Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had reached the age at which young ladies are supposed in technical language to have come out, and thereafter are considered to be in company. "There's one piece o' goods," said the Colonel to his wife, "that we ha'n't disposed of, nor got a customer for yet. That 's Matildy. I don't mean to set HER up at vaandoo.
Her eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the sinking away of the cheeks, gave evidence that it was an uncommon woman who lay there quietly waiting the death angel. She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way. "O Marthy!" she breathed. "Matildy, I didn't know you was so bad, or I'd 'a' come before. Why didn't you let me know?" said Mrs.
I leaned over to her an' whispered, 'Don't fret, Matildy, they ain't wuth mindin'. She gave me a little wintry smile but the tears kep a' comin' an' by an' bye she got up and went out, an' ef she don't imitate the Prophet Jeremi an' water her piller with her tears this night, then I've changed my name sence mornin'.
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