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Updated: May 28, 2025
"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.
"I can teach Reuby better if I have other children too," she said. "I think no child ought to be sent into the district school under ten. The confinement is too much for them. Let me have all the boys and girls between six and eight, and I'll carry them along with Reuby for the next two or three years at any rate," she said.
"If we were not so far out of the world, I should have to give it up," she said; "I know it is proper they should come; but it seems to me just as strange as if they were to walk into the study in the evening when I am teaching Reuby. I can't make it seem right; and when I see them writing down what I say, it just paralyzes me." It might have seemed so to Draxy, but it did not to her hearers.
On the day of the funeral, when Draxy entered the church leading little Reuby by the hand, a visible shudder ran through the congregation. The news had run like wildfire through the parish, on the morning after the Elder's death, that Mrs. Kinney's hair had all turned gray in the night. But nobody was in the least prepared for the effect.
The new candidate for immersion stood bleating and trembling with her forefeet planted against the slippery bank, pushing back with all her strength while Jimmy propelled from the rear. "Boys!" Dorothy's clear voice called across the stream. "Do hurry! She's been in long enough, now! Keep her head up, can't you, and squeeze the wool hard! You're not half washing! Oh, Reuby! thee'll drown her!
At last Draxy said, "What is it, Reuby? Don't you want to hear mamma read any longer?" "Where is papa?" replied Reuby. "I want to go and find papa." "Papa has gone way down to the Lower Mills, darling; he won't come home till dinner," said Draxy, looking perplexedly at Reuby's face. She had never known him to ask for his father in this way before.
"O Seth!" she said, after little Reuben's birth she for the first time called her husband by this name; before that, although she lavished on him all words of endearment, she had never found courage to call him Seth, "O Seth!" she said, "I feel now as you did about me before we were married. I can't make myself think about anything but Reuby.
At that instant a terrible pain shot through her left side and forced a sharp cry from her lips. She half rose exclaiming, "Reuby, oh, darling!" and sank back in her chair unconscious. Just as Elder Williams was concluding the communion service, the door of the church was burst open, and old Ike, tottering into the aisle, cried out in a shrill voice: "Mis' Kinney's dead! Mis' Kinney's dead!"
Keep her head up!" Another unlucky douse and another half-smothered bleat, Dorothy released the yearling and plunged to the rescue. "Go after that lamb, Reuby!" she cried with exasperation in her voice. Reuby followed the yearling, that had disappeared over the orchard slope, upsetting an obstacle in its path, which happened to be Jimmy.
After pronouncing these words, Draxy paused again, and looking towards her pew, made a slight sign to Reuby. The child understood instantly, and walked swiftly to her. "Sit in this chair here by mamma, Reuby darling," she whispered, and Reuby climbed up into the big chair on her right hand, and leaned his fair golden head against the high mahogany back.
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