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Updated: June 12, 2025
His hand was steady, but the attitude was an excuse for not making an immediate reply. "And the doctor don't want I should be left without anybody," Zeena continued. "He wanted I should speak to you about a girl he's heard about, that might come " Ethan laid down the razor and straightened himself with a laugh. "Denis Eady! If that's all, I guess there's no such hurry to look round for a girl."
He used to think that fifty years sounded like a long time to live together, but now it seemed to him that they might pass in a flash. Then, with a sudden dart of irony, he wondered if, when their turn came, the same epitaph would be written over him and Zeena.
Mattie Silver came from Stamford, and when she entered the Fromes' household to act as her cousin Zeena's aid it was thought best, as she came without pay, not to let her feel too sharp a contrast between the life she had left and the isolation of a Starkfield farm. But for this as Frome sardonically reflected it would hardly have occurred to Zeena to take any thought for the girl's amusement.
The sweetness of the picture, and the relief of knowing that his fears of "trouble" with Zeena were unfounded, sent up his spirits with a rush, and he, who was usually so silent, whistled and sang aloud as he drove through the snowy fields. There was in him a slumbering spark of sociability which the long Starkfield winters had not yet extinguished.
"Think I'd forgotten you, Matt?" he asked with sheepish glee. She answered seriously: "I thought maybe you couldn't come back for me." "Couldn't? What on earth could stop me?" "I knew Zeena wasn't feeling any too good to-day." "Oh, she's in bed long ago." He paused, a question struggling in him. "Then you meant to walk home all alone?" "Oh, I ain't afraid!" she laughed.
Zeena took the view that Mattie was bound to make the best of Starkfield since she hadn't any other place to go to; but this did not strike Ethan as conclusive. Zeena, at any rate, did not apply the principle in her own case. He felt all the more sorry for the girl because misfortune had, in a sense, indentured her to them.
Ethan sat speechless, not pretending to eat, but Mattie nibbled valiantly at her food and asked Zeena one or two questions about her visit to Bettsbridge. Zeena answered in her every-day tone and, warming to the theme, regaled them with several vivid descriptions of intestinal disturbances among her friends and relatives.
A slight engineering job in Florida, put in his way during his period of study at Worcester, increased his faith in his ability as well as his eagerness to see the world; and he felt sure that, with a "smart" wife like Zeena, it would not be long before he had made himself a place in it.
Perhaps Zeena had failed to see the new doctor or had not liked his counsels: Ethan knew that in such cases the first person she met was likely to be held responsible for her grievance. When he re-entered the kitchen the lamp lit up the same scene of shining comfort as on the previous evening.
"Of course Jotham'll drive you over," Ethan roused himself to answer. He became suddenly conscious that he was looking at Mattie while Zeena talked to him, and with an effort he turned his eyes to his wife.
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