 | Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West |  |
MRS. HILL AND MRS. TROOST.
It was just two o'clock of one of the warmest of the July
afternoons. Mrs. Hill had her dinner all over, had put on her
clean cap and apron, and was sitting on the north porch, making
an unbleached cotton shirt for Mr. Peter Hill, who always wore
unbleached shirts at harvest time. Mrs. Hill was a thrifty
housewife. She had been pursuing this economical avocation
for some little time, interrupting herself only at times to “shu!”
away the flocks of half-grown chickens that came noisily about
the door for the crumbs from the table-cloth, when the sudden
shutting down of a great blue cotton umbrella caused her to
drop her work, and exclaim—
“Well, now, Mrs. Troost! who would have thought you ever
would come to see me!”
“Why, I have thought a great many times I would come,”
said the visitor, stamping her little feet—for she was a little
woman—briskly on the blue flag stones, and then dusting them
nicely with her white cambric handkerchief, before venturing on
the snowy floor of Mrs. Hill. And, shaking hands, she added,
“It has been a good while, for I remember when I was here
last I had my Jane with me—quite a baby then, if you mind—
and she is three years old now.”
“Is it possible?” said Mrs. Hill, untying the bonnet strings
of her neighbor, who sighed, as she continued, “Yes, she was
three along in February;” and she sighed again, more heavily
than before, though there was no earthly reason that I know of
why she should sigh, unless perhaps the flight of time, thus
brought to mind, suggested the transitory nature of human
things.
Mrs. Hill laid the bonnet of Mrs. Troost on her “spare bed,”
and covered it with a little, pale-blue crape shawl, kept especially
for like occasions; and, taking from the drawer of the
bureau a large fan of turkey feathers, she presented it to her
guest, saying, “A very warm day, isn't it?”
“Oh, dreadful, dreadful; it seems as hot as a bake oven; and
I suffer with the heat all summer, more or less. But it's a
world of suffering;” and Mrs. Troost half closed her eyes, as if
to shut out the terrible reality.
“Hay-making requires sunshiny weather, you know; so we
must put up with it,” said Mrs. Hill; “besides, I can mostly
find some cool place about the house; I keep my sewing here
on the porch, and, as I bake my bread or cook my dinner, manage
to catch it up sometimes, and so keep from getting overheated;
and then, too, I get a good many stitches taken in the
course of the day.”
“This is a nice, cool place—completely curtained with vines,”
said Mrs. Troost; and she sighed again; “they must have cost
you a great deal of pains.”
“Oh, no—no trouble at all; morning-glories grow themselves;
they only require to be planted. I will save seed for
you this fall, and next summer you can have your porch as
shady as mine.”
“And if I do, it would not signify,” said Mrs. Troost; “I
never get time to sit down from one week's end to another;
besides, I never had any luck with vines; some folks have'nt,
you know.”
Mrs. Hill was a woman of a short, plethoric habit; one that
might be supposed to move about with little agility, and to find
excessive warmth rather inconvenient; but she was of a happy,
cheerful temperament; and when it rained she tucked up her
skirts, put on thick shoes, and waddled about the same as ever,
saying to herself, “This will make the grass grow,” or “it will
bring on the radishes,” or something else equally consolatory.
Mrs. Troost, on the contrary, was a little thin woman, who
looked as though she might move about nimbly at any season;
but, as she herself often said, she was a poor unfortunate creature,
and pitied herself a great deal, as she was in justice bound
bear.
They were near neighbors—these good women—but their
social interchanges of tea-drinking were not of very frequent
occurrence, for sometimes Mrs. Troost had nothing to wear like
other folks; sometimes it was too hot, and sometimes it was
too cold; and then again, nobody wanted to see her, and she
was sure she didn't want to go where she wasn't wanted.
Moreover, she had such a great barn of a house as no other
woman ever had to take care of. But in all the neighborhood
it was called the big house, so Mrs. Troost was in some measure
compensated for the pains it cost her. It was, however,
as she said, a barn of a place, with half the rooms unfurnished,
partly because they had no use for them, and partly because
they were unable to get furniture. So it stood right in the sun,
with no shutters, and no trees about it, and Mrs. Troost said
she didn't suppose it ever would have. She was always opposed
to building it, but she never had her way about anything.
Nevertheless, some people said Mr. Troost had taken the
dimensions of his house with his wife's apron strings—but that
may have been slander.
While Mrs. Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs.
Hill sewed on the last button, and shaking the loose threads
from the completed garment, held it up a moment to take a
satisfactory view, as it were, and folded it way.
“Well, did you ever!” said Mrs. Troost; “you have made
half a shirt, and I have got nothing at all done. My hands
sweat so I can't use the needle, and it's no use to try.”
“Lay down your work for a little while, and we will walk
in the garden.”
So Mrs. Hill threw a towel over her head, and taking a little
tin basin in her hand, the two went to the garden—Mrs. Troost
under the shelter of the blue umbrella, which she said was so
heavy that it was worse than nothing. Beans, radishes, raspberries,
and currants, besides many other things, were there in
profusion, and Mrs. Troost said everything flourished for Mrs.
Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds. “And
you have bees, too—don't they sting the children, and give you
(Mrs. Troost always called her husband so) bought a hive, or
rather he traded a calf for one—a nice, likely calf, too, it was—
and they never did us one bit of good”—and the unhappy
woman sighed.
“They do say,” said Mrs. Hill, sympathizingly, “that bees
won't work for some folks; in case their king dies they are
very likely to quarrel, and not do well; but we have never had
any any ill luck with ours; and we last year sold forty dollars
worth of honey, besides having all we wanted for our own use.
Did yours die off, or what, Mrs. Troost?”
“Why,” said the ill-natured visitor, “my oldest boy got
stung one day, and, being angry, upset the hive, and I never
found it out for two or three days; and, sending Troost to put
it up in its place, there was not a bee to be found, high or low.”
“You don't tell! the obstinate little creatures! but they
must be treated kindly, and I have heard of their going off for
less things.”
The basin was by this time filled with currants, and they returned
to the house. Mrs. Hill, seating herself on the sill of
the kitchen door, began to prepare her fruit for tea, while Mrs.
Troost drew her chair near, saying, “Did you ever hear about
William McMicken's bees?”
Mrs. Hill had never heard, and expressing an anxiety to do
so, was told the following story:
“His wife, you know, was she that was Sally May, and it's
an old saying—
You marry for worse, and not for better.'
“Sally was a dressy, extravagant girl; she had her bonnet
`done up' twice a year always, and there was no end to her
frocks and ribbons and fine things. Her mother indulged her
in everything; she used to say Sally deserved all she got; that
she was worth her weight in gold. She used to go everywhere,
Sally did. There was no big meeting that she was not at, and
no quilting that she didn't help to get up. All the girls went
to her for the fashions, for she was a good deal in town at her
used to have her sleeves a little bigger than anybody else, you
remember, and then she wore great stiffners in them—la, me!
there was no end to her extravagance.
“She had a changeable silk, yellow and blue, made with a
surplus front; and when she wore that, the ground wasn't good
enough for her to walk on, so some folks used to say; but I
never thought Sally was a bit proud or lifted up; and if anybody
was sick, there was no better-hearted creature than she;
and then, she was always good-natured-as the day was long,
and would sing all the time at her work. I remember, along
before she was married, she used to sing one song a great deal,
beginning
`I've got a sweetheart with bright black eyes;'
she might not get him after all—for a good many thought they
would never make a match, their dispositions were so contrary.
William was of a dreadful quiet turn, and a great home body;
and as for being rich, he had nothing to brag of, though he was
high larnt, and followed the river as clark sometimes.”
Mrs. Hill had by this time prepared her currants, and Mrs.
Troost paused from her story while she filled the kettle, and
attached the towel to the end of the well-sweep, where it waved
as a signal for Peter to come to supper.
“Now, just move your chair a leetle nearer the kitchen door,
if you please,” said Mrs. Hill, “and I can make up my biscuit,
and hear you, too.”
Meantime, coming to the door with some bread-crumbs in
her hand, she began scattering them on the ground, and calling,
“Biddy, biddy, biddy—chicky, chicky, chicky”—hearing which,
a whole flock of poultry was about her in a minute; and stooping
down, she secured one of the fattest, which, an hour afterwards,
was broiled for supper.
“Dear me, how easily you do get along!” said Mrs. Troost.
And it was some time before she could compose herself sufficiently
to take up the thread of her story. At length, however,
she began with—
“Well, as I was saying, nobody thought William McMicken
would marry Sally May. Poor man, they say he is not like
himself any more. He may get a dozen wives, but he'll never
get another Sally. A good wife she made him, for all she was
such a wild girl.
“The old man May was opposed to the marriage, and threatened
to turn Sally, his own daughter, out of house and home;
but she was headstrong, and would marry whom she pleased;
and so she did, though she never got a stitch of new clothes,
nor one thing to keep house with. No; not one single thing
did her father give her, when she went away, but a hive of bees.
He was right down ugly, and called her Mrs. McMicken whenever
he spoke to her after she was married; but Sally didn't
seem to mind it, and took just as good care of the bees as
though they were worth a thousand dollars. Every day in
winter she used to feed them—maple-sugar, if she had it; and
if not, a little Muscovade in a saucer or some old broken dish.
“But it happened one day that a bee stung her on the hand
—the right one, I think it was,—and Sally said right away that
it was a bad sign; and that very night she dreamed that she
went out to feed her bees, and a piece of black crape was tied
on the hive. She felt that it was a token of death, and told her
husband so, and she told me and Mrs. Hanks. No, I won't be
sure she told Mrs. Hanks, but Mrs. Hanks got to hear it some
way.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Hill, wiping the tears away with her
apron, “I really didn't know, till now, that poor Mrs. McMicken
was dead.”
“Oh, she is not dead,” answered Mrs. Troost, “but as well
as she ever was, only she feels that she is not long for this
world.” The painful interest of her story, however, had kept
her from work, so the afternoon passed without her having accomplished
much—she never could work when she went visiting.
Meantime Mrs. Hill had prepared a delightful supper, without
seeming to give herself the least trouble. Peter came precisely
at the right moment, and, as he drew a pail of water,
removed the towel, from the well-sweep, easily and naturally,
thus saving his wife the trouble.
“Troost would never have thought of it,” said his wife;
and she finished with an “Ah, well!” as though all her tribulations
would be over before long.
As she partook of the delicious honey, she was reminded of
her own upset hive, and the crisp-red radishes brought thoughts
of the weedy garden at home; so that, on the whole, her visit,
she said, made her perfectly wretched, and she should have no
heart for a week; nor did the little basket of extra nice fruit,
which Mrs. Hill presented her as she was about to take leave,
heighten her spirits in the least. Her great heavy umbrella,
she said, was burden enough for her.
“But Peter will take you in the carriage,” insisted Mrs.
Hill.
“No,” said Mrs. Troost, as though charity were offered her;
“it will be more trouble to get in and out than to walk”—and
so she trudged home, saying, “Some folks are born to be
lucky.”
| Clovernook, or, Recollections of our
neighborhood in the West | |