Mrs. Hartlett looked up at him and smiled.
“He is a source of comfort to me,” said she. “He sings as long as the sun shines. Last winter he was mute for upwards of a week, and I feared that I was going to lose him, but it was only that he was moulting. When his new coat had come he began singing again and in spite of the fact that he has no mate he is happy.”
Two mateless creatures and both of them happy. It’s all in the temperament.
“How do you like it up on these hills?” said Mrs. Hartlett.
“Very much,” said Ethel. “It is so quiet and there are so few houses that it’s a pleasant contrast to our noisy, busy New York life.”
“Child, I remember when this was a busy community, too,” said the old lady. “When I was a young lady of eighteen, we had a singing school here and Dr. Lowell Mason used to come from Boston every two weeks to teach us, and there were two hundred young people of both sexes who gathered in the seminary to learn of him.”
“You had a seminary here?” said I, astonished, for the district school of the present day is the only school in the neighbourhood, and it does not accommodate more than twenty-five.
“Indeed we did; a seminary and a college for chirurgeons. Dr. Hadley was the best chirurgeon of his time and young men from all over New England used to come here to learn of him. Times have changed, but if the houses have fallen away and the people gone the country has grown more beautiful.”
“With my magazines and my young friends. I have taken _Littell’s Living Age_ and the _Atlantic_ ever since they started, and they keep me abreast of the times, and the young people are very good. Two years ago they clubbed together and gave me a cabinet organ. I cannot play it myself; my fingers are too stiff, but the young folks come in and play me the old tunes I knew when I was a girl—‘Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,’ and many others that are never heard now, I suspect. Mr. and Mrs. Hayden are especially kind in coming to sing to me but all the young people are very thoughtful.”
It was not until later that I realized that the “young people” she had specified were considerably over fifty. But she was right. Youth is a relative term.
“When my rheumatism permits of walking. My knees are somewhat rheumatic but it is no more than I might reasonably expect at my great age. I shall be one hundred years old on the 16th of September next if the Lord spares me.”