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Bickford, and I respected 'em all. I don't know but what I think of one on 'em 'most as much as I do of the other." "Why, 'tis difficult for you, ain't it?" responded Miss Pendexter. "I don't know's I can offer advice." "No, I s'pose not," answered her friend slowly, with a shadow of disappointment coming over her calm face. "I feel sure you would if you could, Abby."
"Oh, what a person you are to think o' things! I did so dread goin' 'way up there all alone," said Abby Pendexter. "I 'm no hand to go off alone, an' I had it before me, so I really got to dread it. I do so enjoy it after I get there, seein' Aunt Cynthy, an' she 's always so much better than I expect to find her." "Well, we 'll start early," said Mrs. Hand cheerfully; and so they parted.
Miss Pendexter was a cheerful, even gay little person, who always brought a pleasant flurry of excitement, and usually had a genuine though small piece of news to tell, or some new aspect of already received information. Mrs. Bickford smiled as she looked up to see this sprightly neighbor coming.
They looked back more than once to see Aunt Cynthia's face at the window as she watched them out of sight. Miss Abby Pendexter was full of excitement; she looked as happy as a child. "I feel as if we 'd gained the battle of Waterloo," said Mrs. Hand. "I 've really had a most beautiful time. You an' your aunt must n't forgit to invite me up some time again to spend another day."
"Perhaps you'll feel sure when you first wake up in the morning," answered Miss Pendexter solicitously. "It's a case where I don't deem myself qualified to offer you any advice. But I'll say one thing, seeing's you've been so friendly spoken and confiding with me. I never was married myself, Mis' Bickford, because it wa'n't so that I could have the one I liked." "I suppose he ain't livin', then?
I have to scant on flowers so 's to make room for pole beans," said Miss Pendexter gayly. She had only a tiny strip of land behind her house, but she always had something to give away, and made riches out of her narrow poverty. "A few flowers gives me just as much pleasure as more would," she added. "You get acquainted with things when you've only got one or two roots.
Why, I wan't never aware you had met with a disappointment, Abby," said Mrs. Bickford instantly. None of her neighbors had ever suspected little Miss Pendexter of a romance. "Yes 'm, he's livin'," replied Miss Pendexter humbly. "No 'm, I never have heard that he died." "I want to know!" exclaimed the woman of experience.
Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins a sad losel, we fear who ran away to try his fortunes before the mast, and fell overboard in a gale off Hatteras. "Lost at sea," says the chubby marble slab in the Old South Burying-Ground, "ætat 18." Perhaps that is why no blue-jacket, sober or drunk, was ever repulsed from the door of the Bilkins mansion. Of course Mrs.
I want to leave everything nice, goin' away for all day so. So I meant to get the flowers out o' the way this afternoon. Why, it's most half past four, ain't it? But I sha'n't pick the rose till mornin'; 't will be blowed out better then." "The rose?" questioned Miss Pendexter. "Why, are you goin' to pick that, too?" "Yes, I be. I never like to let 'em fade on the bush.
The narrow road was frozen in deep ruts, but a smooth-trodden little foot-path that ran along its edge was very inviting to the wayfarers. Mrs. Hand walked first and Miss Pendexter followed, and they were talking busily nearly all the way, so that they had to stop for breath now and then at the tops of the little hills.
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