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Most extraordinary of all, out of the silence and the void came the checker-paned windows of the store at Coniston, then the store itself, with the great oaks bending over it, then the dear familiar faces, Moses and Amandy, Eph Prescott limping toward them, and little Rias Richardson in an apron with a scoop shovel in his hand, and many others.
And as they drove away there trotted up behind them Moses and Amandy Hatch, with their farm team, and all the little Hatches, Eben and George and Judy and Liza. As they jogged along they drank in the fragrance of the dew-washed meadows and the pines, and a great blue heron stood knee-deep on the far side of Deacon Lysander's old mill-pond, watching them philosophically as they passed.
Crabtree from behind the counter where he was doing up a pound of tea for the poet, who found it impossible to take his eyes off the politician. "Miss Rose Mary ain't give me a glass of buttermilk for more'n a week, and they do say she has to keep a loaf handy in the milk-house to feed him 'fore he gets as far as Miss Amandy and the kitchen.
"And that would be the thing about my getting the new teeth. Don't either of you need 'em, and it would be selfish of me to spend on something they couldn't anybody borrow from me. Amandy, dig a little deeper around that shoot, I don't want no puny vine under my window!" "I'm a-trying, Sister Viney," answered Miss Amanda propitiatingly.
Tucker ain't said a word to nobody about it, nor have Rose Mary, but they are a-getting ready to move the last of the week, and I don't know where to. I jest begged Rose Mary to let me have Miss Viney and Miss Amandy. I could move out the melojion into the kitchen and give 'em the parlor, and welcome, too.
Cheery Lem Hallowell and his wife, and Cousin Ephraim, to talk about the war, hobbling slowly up the stairs for rheumatism had been added to that trouble of the Wilderness bullet now, and Ephraim was getting along in years; and Rias Richardson stole up in his carpet slippers; and Moses, after his chores were done, and Amandy with her cakes and delicacies, which he left untouched though Amandy never knew it.
"A man's part," he added as two serious eyes were raised to his. "In just a little while I'll be a man and have Uncle Tucker and Aunt Viney and Aunt Amandy to be mine to keep care of always, Rose Mamie says," answered Stonie in his most practical tone of voice as he began to see the end of the long strings draw into his weaving of the cracker.
"They'll be surprised some, and disappointed some," said Lem, cheerily; "they was kind of plannin' a little celebration when you come back, Will you and Cynthy. Amandy Hatch was a-goin' to bake a cake, and the minister was callatin' to say some word of welcome. Wahn't goin' to be anything grand jest homelike. But you was right to come if you was tuckered. I guess Cynthy fetched you.
"Now, Amandy, come away from those flower cans and get out the grave clothes from the bureau drawers and let the boys wrap them in that old sheet first and then in the newspapers and then put 'em in that box trunk with brass tacks over there!" directed Miss Lavinia as Miss Amandy wandered over by the window, along which stood a row of tomato cans into which were stuck slips of all the vines and plants on the land of the Briars, ready for transportation across Providence Road when the time came.
Aunt Amandy lent me two aprons and a sack and a petticoat for the peony bushes, and Aunt Viney gave me this shawl and three chemises that cover all the pinks. I've taken all the tablecloths for the early peas, and Stonie's shirts, each one of them, have covered a whole lot of the poet's narcissus. All the rest of the things are my own clothes, and I've still got a clean dress for to-morrow.
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