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Updated: June 22, 2025
The little house was still; the warm white moonlight lay like summer snow all over it; Draxy looked out of her window; the Elder was slowly coming up the hill; Draxy knelt down like a little child and said, "God bless him," and crept back to bed. When she heard him shut his bedroom door she went to sleep. The next day Draxy's eyes did not look as they had looked the day before.
As the Elder and Draxy were sitting at breakfast the next day, they caught sight of the old man's bent figure walking up and down outside the gate, and stopping now and then irresolutely, as if he would come in, but dared not. "Why, there's old Ike," exclaimed the Elder, "What on earth can he want at this time of day!"
"Supposin' you go up first, Draxy," said Reuben, hesitatingly, "an' see how 'tis. I always did hate Injuns." "Oh!" said Draxy; she had hardly observed the mention of that feature in the Elder's household, and she laughed outright. Her ideas of the ancestral savage were too vague to be very alarming.
All questions and explanations were saved till the next morning, when Draxy, still curled up like a kitten, would sit mounted on the top of the buckwheat barrel in the store, while her father lay stretched on the counter, smoking.
"Yes, sir, my mamma very often cries when she's glad," spoke up Reuby, his little face getting very red, and his lips quivering. "She's very glad, sir, if she says so." This chivalrous defense calmed poor Draxy, but did not comfort the Deacon, who hurried away, saying to himself, "Don't believe there was ever such a woman nor such a boy in this world before.
"Oh, yes," said the Elder, "no sort o' trouble about that," and he glowed with delight. He felt sure that his cause was gained. But he found Draxy very inflexible. There was but one arrangement of which she would think for a moment. It was, that the Elder should let to them one half of his house, and that the two families should be entirely distinct.
"I guess that's true enough to pass muster," he chuckled to himself as he walked away. "If ever I'd ha' believed a woman could make me stop this train for her! An', by George, without askin' me to either!" Draxy slept on for hours. The winter twilight came earlier than usual, for the sky was overcast.
Melville had written that there were many strangers in the town in the summer, and that she presumed Draxy could soon find all the work she wished as seamstress; also that there were many chances of work for a man who was accustomed to gardening, as, of course, Reuben must be.
Swift?" replied Draxy; and then, with a little twinge of conscience, added immediately, "I have been thinking of that very thing myself, that perhaps, if it wouldn't seem strange to the people, that would be the best way, because I know the handwriting so well, and it really is very hard for a stranger to read."
Always there is hope of meeting; always there is consciousness of presence; everywhere a mysterious sense that the loved one has passed by. More than once Seth Kinney knelt and laid his cheek on the stairs which Draxy's feet had just ascended! Often sweet, guileless Draxy thought, as she went up and down, "Ah, the dear feet that go over these stairs."
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