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Updated: June 20, 2025
"It makes 'em idle and restless for days, Miss Goldthwaite," said Aunt Hepsy, with grim decision, "an' I ain't a-goin' to have it, so let it a be." Miss Goldthwaite held her peace a moment, and then went straight up to Aunt Hepsy, and, to Lucy's amazement, laid her two hands on her shoulders and looked into her face with laughing eyes.
"Yes, Aunt Hepsy," answered Lucy, her sweet, clear tones contrasting strongly with her aunt's unpleasant voice. "Miss Goldthwaite's all right again, eh?" she asked, sitting down near the door. "I am thankful to say my sister is none the worse of her adventure," answered Mr. Goldthwaite. "But for Tom's bravery the consequences might have been more serious."
Thus the long, weary days rolled away, each setting sun crushing another hope, until at last the autumn storms approached, the last Banker was safe home; and by this time it was plain, even to poor Hepsy Ann's faithful heart, that her dead would not come back to her. "If only Elkanah were here!" she had sometimes sighed to herself; but in all these days she wrote him no word.
"I daresay I am very stupid," said Lucy low and quietly; "but when Aunt Hepsy talks so loud I don't know what I am doing." Miss Hepsy entered at that moment, fortunately without having heard Lucy's patient speech. "Don't lean your wet, dirty arms on the table, boy," said she with a sharp glance at Tom. "If you must be in, sit on your chair like a Christian." Tom immediately sat up like a poker.
I figgered out that his blood was thinnin' and I knew what was good for that. My great Aunt Hepsy, that lived over to East Wellmouth, she was a great hand for herbs and such and she'd give me a receipt for thickenin' the blood that was somethin' wonderful. It had more kind of healin' herbs in it than you could shake a stick at. I cooked a kittleful and got him to take a dose four times a day.
Neither tall nor short, but with a lithe figure, a natural grace and sweet dignity of carriage, the result of sufficient healthy exercise and a pure, untroubled spirit; hands and feet, mouth and nose, not such as a gentleman would particularly notice; and straight brown hair, which shaded the only really beautiful part of Hepsy Ann's face, her clear, honest, brave blue eyes: eyes from which spoke a soul at peace with itself and with the outward world, a soul yet full of love and trust, fearing nothing, doubting nothing, believing much good, and inclined to patient endurance of the human weaknesses it met with in daily life, as not perhaps altogether strange to itself.
She chatted with the farmers who stopped at the inn door, she bought things at the stores that she did not want, and she speedily discovered Aunt Hepsy, and loved to sit with her in the little shop and pick up the traditions and the gossip of the neighborhood. And she did not confine her angelic visits to the village.
"Wal, ye see I had to tell Hepsy I was goin' out to watch. Wal, so I was; but not jest in the way she took it: but, Lordy massy! a feller has to tell his wife suthin' to keep her quiet, ye know, 'specially Hepsy. "Wal, wal, of all the moonlight nights that ever I did see, I never did see one equal to that. Why, you could see the color o' every thing.
"You're much too smart with your tongue, young 'un," said Miss Hepsy severely, and then relapsed into stolid silence. The click of her knitting needles, the ticking of the clock, and the rain beating on the panes, were the only sounds to be heard in the house. Tom drew a half-sheet of paper and a pencil from his pocket, laid it on the table, and kept his attention there for a few minutes.
It is hardly to be wondered at that her descent was arrested, and her rounded form tenderly lowered to terra firma. "I like this out here, don't you?" was her next remark, shaking out her fairy muslin skirts and placidly surveying the scene. "I've been out every day these let me see yes, three days. Aunt Hepsy says I'll get tanned, but I don't mind. You know Aunt Hepsy, don't you? Everybody does."
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