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They found Aunt Keziah's bottle in the cupboard, and tasted and smelt of it. "Good West Indjy as ever I tasted," said Mrs. Hagburn; "and there stands her broken pitcher, on the hearth. Ah, empty! I never could bring my mind to taste it; but now I'm sorry I never did, for I suppose nobody in the world can make any more of it."
I bet Keziah's burned the soup;" with which words Miss Hepsy burst into the kitchen, ready to extinguish the unfortunate "help" if everything was not up to the mark. The brother and sister lingered a moment on the threshold, feeling new and strange and sad, their welcome had been so disappointing. "Lucy," said Tom Hurst suddenly, "do you believe that woman's mamma's sister? I don't."
"That is the duty given us by God, to marry the one we love." Keziah's agitation, which had grown as she told her story, suddenly flashed into flame. "Is that as fur as you can see?" she asked fiercely. "It's an easy duty, then or looks easy now. I've got a harder one; it's to stand by the promise I gave and the man I married." He looked at her as if he thought she had lost her wits.
I'll guarantee the church if you'll guarantee the girl. Why, it's your duty! Come, now, what do you say?" Keziah's hesitation was at an end. Her face lit up. "I say good!" she cried. "And I'll be thankful to you all the rest of my life. But for the dear mercy sakes, don't say 'duty' to me again.
"Has this Captain Hammond no children of his own?" he asked. Keziah's answer was short for her. "Yes," she said. "One." "Ah! another daughter?" "No, a son. Name's Nathaniel, and he's a sea captain. He's on his way from Surinam to New York now. They expect him to make port most any time, I believe. Now, Mr.
Can't you give us any help at all? Hasn't she been here?" "Good morning, Captain Hammond. You must excuse me, I'm busy." He went into the office and closed the door. Captain Nat rubbed his forehead desperately. He had been almost sure that Abner Stone would put him on Keziah's track. Grace had thought so, too.
Now if these flowers were really, as there was so much reason for supposing, the one ingredient that had for hundreds of years been missing out of Aunt Keziah's nostrum, if it was this which that strange Indian sagamore had mingled with his drink with such beneficial effect, why should not Septimius now restore it, and if it would not make his beloved aunt young again, at least assuage the violent symptoms, and perhaps prolong her valuable life some years, for the solace and delight of her numerous friends?
Keziah's words were repeating themselves over and over in his brain. She had asked about him. She had not forgotten him altogether. And what did the housekeeper mean by saying that she had not loved Captain Hammond in the way that Not that it could make any difference. Nothing could give him back his happiness. But what did it mean? Mrs. Prince was very glad to see him.
There was saintliness in the docility with which she rose at six and went to bed at nine; saintliness in the quiet asceticism with which she ate porridge for breakfast and porridge for supper at the first honestly believing it either a joke or an insult, and that they had given her pigs' food to try her temper; saintliness in the silence with which she accepted her dinners, maybe a piece of fried bacon and potatoes, or a huge mess of apple-pudding on washing-days, or a plate of poached eggs cooked in a pan not over clean; saintliness in the enforced attention which she gave to Keziah's rambling stories of her pigs and her chickens, her mother's ailments, Jenny's shortcomings in the matter of sweepings and savings, Tim's wastefulness in the garden over the kailrunts, and the hardships of life on a lone woman left with only a huzzy to look after her; saintliness in the repression of that proud, fastidious self to which Keziah's familiarity and snuff, Jenny's familiarity and disorder, the smell of the peat which was the only fuel they burnt reeking through the house, and the utter ugliness and barren discomfort of everything about, were hourly miseries which she would once have repudiated with her most cutting scorn; saintliness in the repression of that self indeed at all four corners, and the resolute submission to her burden because it was her fitting punishment.
The learned chemist supported most decidedly the latter opinion, and showed Septimius how he might make for himself a simpler apparatus, with no better aids than Aunt Keziah's teakettle, and one or two trifling things, which the doctor himself supplied, by which all might be done with every necessary scrupulousness. "Let me look again at the formula," said he.
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