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The best day's work Reuel Green has ever done was to die and leave that money to Lovina." "Why, Vesta!" said Miss Rejoice's soft voice; "how you do talk!" "Well, it's true!" Miss Vesta replied. "And you know it, Rejoice, my dear, as well as I do. Any other news in Joppa, Mr. De Arthenay? I haven't heard from over there for a long time."
"But I am forgetting a message I have for you, ladies. Last week I was passing through New Joppa, and I stopped to call on Miss Lovina Green; I always stop there when I go through that region. Miss Lovina asked me to tell you let me see! what was it?" He paused, to disentangle this particular message from the many he always carried, in his journeyings from one town to another.
"'Cause she's a big tom-boy," said Lovina Tibbs, who had come from the kitchen to call the family to supper. "Ain't yer 'shamed of yerself, Mary Elliot? a great girl like you, most ten years old, walkin' top o' rail fences and climbin' apple-trees in the low pastur'!" "No, I'm not!" said Mollie, promptly. "Hush, Mollie," said Mrs. Elliot. "Lovina, that will do.
Lovina, who keeps the Tiare Hotel in Papeite and who knows the gossip of all the South Seas, told me the story one day after he had come to the hotel to fetch two dinners to his home. He had a handsome motor-car, and the man himself was so clean-looking, so precise in every word and motion, that I spoke of the contrast to the skippers, officials, and tourists who lounged about Lovina's bar.
Miss Lovina Perkins was her style, being half-aunt to the unpleasant-colored baby she now tended, rolled up in a flannel shawl, and permitted to be stupid undisturbedly, since its mother was dying. Dying, evidently; she had not been conscious for several hours.
"He is a strange one, that man," said Lovina. "Two years ago I have nice girl here, wait on bar, look sweet, and I make her jus' so my daughter. I go America for visit, and when I come back that girl ruin'. That American take her 'way, and he come tell me straight he couldn't help it. He jus' love her mad. He build her fine house, get automobile. She never work.
"Luck a'n't anything," grimly returned Lovina, who had squeezed her tears back, lest the two or three that inclined to fall should spot the baby's blanket; "but I'm goin' to take her out into the kitchen, because I calculate to open the winder in here." So the baby and Aunt 'Viny went out.
But "everybody has their sorrers," as Hannah-Ann Hall remarked, in one of her "'Cademy" compositions, and 'Tenty came to hers when she was about twenty-two. Miss Lovina was almost bed-ridden with the rheumatism that year, and 'Tenty had to come back twice a day from her work to see to her, so that she made it up by staying evenings, against her usual rules.
"Oh, yes, I remember. She wanted you to know that her Uncle Reuel was dead, and had left her a thousand dollars, so she should be comfortable the rest of her days. She thought you'd be glad to know it." "That is good news!" exclaimed Miss Vesta, heartily. "Poor Lovina! she has been so straitened all these years, and saw no prospect of anything better.
Then the binding was put on, and the quilt was finished; but the September afternoon was finished too, and Lovina Tibbs lighted the lamps in the dining-room before she rang the bell for tea. Lovina had exerted herself in her special department to make this last meeting of the Society a festive occasion.
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