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Updated: June 22, 2025
O my little girl!" he tottered and would have fallen if she had not caught him and led him to a chair. "O father dear," she exclaimed, "don't feel so! I wouldn't call him back this minute if I could," and she smiled piteously. "O Draxy 'tain't that," gasped Reuben. "O daughter! you're dyin' and never lettin' us know it. Your hair's as white's mine."
Oh, but won't Mis' Melville be beat," she continued, half way down the steps; and from the middle of the street she called back, "'an she ain't coming home till to-morrow night." Reuben and Jane and Draxy sat down with as bewildered a feeling as, if they had been transported to another world.
Slowly, noiselessly, in the procession of these beautiful and peaceful days, was drawing near a day which should anoint Draxy with a new baptism, set her apart to a holier work. It came, as the great consecrations of life are apt to come, suddenly, without warning.
Luckily Draxy was too absorbed in her new riches, all the next day, to ask for her accounts, and by the next night the Elder had deliberately resolved to make false returns on his papers as to the price of several articles. "I'll tell her all about it one o' these days when she knows me better," he comforted himself by thinking; "I never did think Ananias was an out an' out liar.
It would take a great deal of Draxy's kindly good-will to make her sister women forgive her for being cleverer than they. Draxy and Reuben were inseparable. They drove; they walked; even into the swamps courageous Draxy penetrated with her father and Bill Sims, as they went about surveying the land; and it was Draxy's keen instinct which in many cases suggested where improvements could be made.
A tallow candle stood on a high bracket, made from a fungus which Reuben had found in the woods. When the candle flared and dripped, Draxy sprang up on the stand, and, poised on one foot, reached over her father's head to snuff it. She looked like a dainty fairy half-floating in the air, but nobody knew it.
The buyer boasted in the village that he had not given more than two thirds of the real value of the place. After Reuben's debts were all paid, there remained just one thousand dollars to be put into the bank. "Why, father! That is a fortune," said Draxy, when he told her. "I did not suppose we should have anything, and it is glorious not to owe any man a cent."
When Draxy and her father entered the door, Elder Kinney rose and remained standing until they reached their pew. As Draxy sat down and the golden sunbeams flickered around her, the Elder sank back into his seat and covered his eyes with his hand. He did not change his posture until the prayers and the hymns and the sermon were over, and Elder Williams said in a low voice,
"I suppose we might go up-stairs, mother," he said; "that's to be our house, as I understand it" Draxy bounded at the words. With flying steps she ascended the stairs and opened the first door. She stood still on the threshold, unable to move from astonishment. It was still light enough to see the room.
Ike's first answer was a look. Then he said, very simply, "I've laid awake all night, ma'am, tryin' to get bold enough to come and ask ye." Draxy looked at her husband, and said in a low voice, "You know what I told you just now, Mr. Kinney?" The Elder saw that Draxy was on Ike's side. "Well, well, Ike," he said, "you shall certainly come and try it. Perhaps you won't like it as well as you think.
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