"Good-by, my dear," she said; "the next time I come I'll try not to be so much like the waterworks girl that had a creek in her back and a cataract in each eye."
She is always facetious when she does not quite trust herself to be serious. And I, who do not dare to trust myself to think about George and his wife, had better stop writing.
June 17. Deacon Richards presented himself at twilight, and found me sitting alone out on the doorsteps. I watched his tall figure coming up the driveway, bent with age a little, but still massive and vigorous; and somehow by the time he was near enough to speak, I felt that I had caught his mood. He smiled broadly as he greeted me.
"Where's the baby?" he demanded. "I supposed I should find you giving it its supper."
"There isn't any 'it' in this house," was my retort; "and as for baby's supper, you are just as ignorant as a man always is. Any woman would know that babies are put to bed long before this."
"How should I know what time it went to bed?" he asked, with a laugh in his voice. "I never raised a baby. I've come to talk about it, though."
"Look here, Deacon Daniel," I cried out, with affected indignation, "I will not have my baby called 'it,' as if she were a stick or a stock!"
He laughed outright at this; then at my invitation sat down beside me. We were silent for a time, looking at the color fading in the west, and the single star swimming out of the purple as the sky changed into gray. The frogs were working at their music with all the persistence of a child strumming five-finger exercises, but their noise only made the evening more peaceful.
"How restful it is," I said to him at last; "it almost makes one feel there can never be any fretting again about anything."
Deacon Daniel did not answer for a moment, then he said with the solemnity of one who seldom puts sentiment into words,--
I simply assented, and then we were silent again, until at last he moved as if he were waking himself, and sighed. I always wonder whether somewhere in the past Deacon Richards has had his romance, and if so what it may have been. If he has, a night like this might well bring it up to his memory. I am glad if it comes to him with the peace of a psalm.