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This was all that could be got out of Cornelia upon the topic of Abbie, and Mrs. Vanderplauck was obliged to swallow whatever uneasiness, curiosity, or misgiving she may have felt.
I made her get bundled up once or twice, an' I hitched up the horse an' took her ridin' in my phaeton that cost two hundred dollars. You'll be in your dotage some day, Abbie. I've been in my dotage for years now. Oh, I altered my life to fit Jane's. I expected I had a wife to go out and see the neighbors with. By gosh! we never went across the street I'll take on goodness some day, Abbie.
Oh! to be sure, she was in New York, and Ester repeated the laugh it had sounded so queerly to hear any one talk to her about getting up to breakfast; it had not seemed possible that that meal could be prepared without her assistance. "Yes, certainly, I'll get up at once. Have I kept you waiting, Abbie?"
"I was saying, Mother, perhaps I might get somebody to lend me a little money, and then " The figure straightened up. "Don't do it, child!" There was a note almost of terror in her voice. "Don't you ever do it! That was what ruined my father. Abbie promise me promise me, I say! You won't you can't." The girl laid her hand tenderly on her mother's shoulder.
As Old Chris grew older and less able, Abbie was compelled to close off first one room and then another; but Old Chris still occupied the back chamber near the upstairs woodroom, and Abbie still slept in the South bedroom. Early one October afternoon, Jim East, Almont's express agent and keeper of the general store, drove his hooded delivery cart up to the front steps of the big house.
Abbie Snover didn't know, yet she had walked all the way to Mile Corners in the cold. He couldn't understand it. "What'd you come for, anyhow, Abbie Snover?" "Now, Owen, you wait!" Owen Frazer's wife turned to Abbie: "Got lonesome, did you, all by yourself in that big barn of a house?" "I want to talk to Old Chris," Abbie repeated. "Was you so fond of him, then?" Abbie made no answer.
Button, Mrs. Gammons or some other of the neighbors would drop in for a visit, but generally mother and Jessie were alone till Harriet and Frank and I came home from school at half-past four. Our evenings were more cheerful. My sister Hattie was able to play a few simple tunes on the melodeon and Cyrus and Eva or Mary Abbie and John occasionally came in to sing. In this my mother often took part.
The snow melted; the streets ran with water and then froze. Old Chris no longer came into the parlor in the evening to sit, his hands clasped over his thin stomach, his bald head bent until his chin rested upon the starched neckband of his shirt. They ate in silence the meals which Abbie prepared: Old Chris at one end of the long table, and Abbie at the other end.
Abbie nodded briskly: "I'll fix up a rag on a bottle of new milk. I've raised 'em before. We bed two on em oncet Hank ez thet foolish about sich critters." "It'll make quite a peart pet," went on the garrulous old body. "An' I s'pose ye'll be fer givin' it sum name? Ourn was Belshazzar an' Sappho.
It is seldom a mother can approve of her daughter-in-law; but Abbie has many excellencies good manners, and a good heart, and a fortune which is quite respectable." "And strong principles also, Maria. She will bring up her children to know right and wrong, and to do right." "THAT of course. Every good mother does that.
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