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All the sick wanted her; all the children pulled at her gown, and smiled at her from their plays; her heart and her hands were so full, no regret found place to nestle there, and silence brooded dove-like over that sorrowful time gone by. After a while, some ten years after Ned Parker's death, Miss 'Viny took to her bed again, this time never to rise.
I made a terrified noise that brought Viny, my old nurse, to the rescue. Throwing a blanket over me, she almost suffocated me, but she put out the fire. Except for my hands and hair I was not badly burned. About this time I found out the use of a key. One morning I locked my mother up in the pantry, where she was obliged to remain three hours, as the servants were in a detached part of the house.
The little maidens embraced not with their arms, but with their viny locks; whose tendrils instinctively twined about their lovers, till both were lost in the bower." "And what then?" asked Mohi, who, notwithstanding the fingers in his ears, somehow contrived to listen; "What then?" Vouchsafing no reply, Yoomy went on.
They'll want you to break it to the girls, like as not; it's terrible to have no man in a family. All them lone women, and everything to see to; I declare, my heart warms to 'em, if Phoebe is cranky. Ain't you going, Deacon?" The deacon hesitated. "I ain't sure that I'd better, Viny!" he said. "I feel no assurance that Mis' Tree has passed away, and she is not one that welcomes inquiry as a rule.
No, I like the tea, but the tea don't like me. My mother was the same way. She never could drink it. No, not any for me, though I must say I should dearly love a cup." "Miss 'Viny?" "Just a little tea and the rest hot water. Dear me, I shouldn't go to sleep till to-morrow night if I was to drink a cup as strong as that. No a little more water, please.
I was sitting thus in moody silence watching the play of the fountain, when, through the mist, I saw the lonely figure of a girl standing in the shadows of a viny bower. She was toying idly with the swaying tendrils. Her hair was the unfaded gold of youth. Her pale dress of silvery grey, unmarred by any clash of colour, hung closely about a form of wraith-like slenderness.
"I found Mis' Tree sitting up straight in her chair in the parlour. She had her nightcap on, and her feet in a footmuff, but that was all the sign of sickness I could see. She looked up at me as wicked as ever I saw her. 'Here's the deacon, she says! 'he's heard I'm sick Viny saw you come, doctor, and he has come to pray over me. I'm past praying for, Deacon. Have some orange cordial!
So she stayed at home, sewing all day and crying all night, and looking generally miserable, though she said nothing; for whom could she speak to? Aunt 'Viny had resolutely kept her suspicions about Ned Parker to herself, though well she knew who had walked home from meeting with 'Tenty in those pleasant autumn Sundays now gone, pleasure and all.
If it was jes springtime, I'd give her sulphur an' molasses an' jes a leetle cream of tartar; that, used along with egg-shell tea, is the outbeatenest tonic I ever seen. But I never would run ag'in' the seasons. Seems to me I've heared yallerroot spoke of fer killin' nerves." "I don't 'spect we could git no yallerroot round here." "What's the matter with Miss Viny?
Miss Viny took a pair of large spectacles from her pocket, put them on the tip of her nose, and looked over them critically at Lovey Mary. "Stick out yer tongue." Lovey Mary obeyed. "Uh-huh. It's a good thing I looked. You don't no more need yallerroot than a bumblebee. You come in here on the porch an' tell me what's ailin' you, an' I'll do my own prescriptin'."
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