it seemed to lydia gale that from the moment she met eben jakes she understood what fun it was to laugh. she and her mother and three sisters lived together in a comfortable way, and lydia, although she was the youngest, had come to feel that she was declining into those middle years when beauty wanes, and though the desire to charm may raise an eager hand, no one will stay to look. she was a delicate blonde, and when she began to recognize these bounds of life she faded a little into a still neutrality that might soon have made an old woman of her. the sisters were dark, wholesome wenches, known as trainers at the gatherings they were always summoned to enliven; but lydia seldom found their mirth exhilarating. only when eben jakes appeared at the door, that spring twilight, a droll look peering from his blue eyes, and a long forefinger smoothing out the smile from the two lines in his lean cheeks, and asked, as if there were some richness of humor in the supposition, "anybody heard anything of anybody named eunice eliot round here?" she found her own face creasing responsively. eunice eliot had been her [21]mother's maiden name, and it proved that she and eben's mother had been schoolmates. eben's mother had died some years before; and now, taking a little trip with his own horse and buggy to peddle essences and see the country, he had included his mother's friend within the circle of his wandering.

mrs. gale had a welcome ready for him and for the treasured reminiscences of his mother's past, and the three older sisters trained with him to their limit. lydia sat by and listened, smiling all the time. she thought eben's long, lank, broad-shouldered figure very manly, and it shocked her beyond speech to hear one of the trainers avow that, for her part, she thought his thin, yankee face, with its big features and keen eyes, as homely as a hedge-fence. lydia said nothing, but she wondered what people could expect. she was a greedy novel-reader, and she had shy thoughts of her own. it seemed to her that eben, who also had passed his first youth, must have been a great favorite in his day. every commonplace betrayal in those intimate talks with her mother served to show her how good he had been, how simple and true. he had taken care of his mother through a long illness, and then, after her death, lived what must have been a dull life, but one still dutiful toward established bonds, with old betty, the "help" of many years. [22]now betty had died, and before beginning another chapter with some domestic expedient, he had allowed himself this limited trip, to breathe another air and see the world. lydia felt that he had deserved his vacation. all the weary steps to it, she knew, could scarcely have been climbed so robustly save by a hero.

eben had stayed a week, and on the morning set for his leaving, mrs. gale and the three trainers harnessed in haste to drive over to fairfax to see the circus come in. lydia had refused to go, because, for some reason, she felt a little dull that morning, and eben had soberly declared his peddling would take him another way. he meant to be off before the middle of the forenoon; and while he was in the barn, foddering his horse and greasing the wheels, lydia bethought her how he had praised the doughnuts several nights before, and, with an aching impulse to do something for him before he should go, hastily made up a batch, judging that a dozen or so would please him upon the road. but she was left-handed that morning, and as she began to fry, the fat caught fire. then eben, seeing the blaze and smoke, dashed in, set the kettle safely in the sink, and took lydia into his arms.

"say," he whispered to her hidden face, "what if you an' me should get married an' go round some peddlin', an' make our way home towards fall?"

[23]lydia felt that this was the most beautiful invitation that could possibly have been given her, and she answered accordingly:—

"i'd like it ever so much."

within the next week they were married, and set out on their enchanted progress, stopping at doors when they liked, and offering bottles whereof the labels sounded delicious and sweet; or if a house looked poor or stingy, passing it by. sometimes, when lydia felt very daring, she went to the door herself to show her wares, and eben stayed in the carriage and laughed. he said she offered a bottle of vanilla as if it were poison and she wanted to get rid of it, or as if it were water, and of no use to anybody. once, when she had been denied by a sour-faced woman, he stopped under the shade of a tree farther on, and left lydia there while he went back and, by force of his smile and persuasive tongue, sold the same bottle to the same woman, and came back chuckling in a merry triumph.

this was the day that lydia's summer happiness felt the touch of blight. she remembered always just the moment when the wind of trouble touched her. they were driving through a long stretch of maple woods with a ravine below, where ferns grew darkly and water hurried over rocks. lydia was lying back in the carriage, [24]swaying with its motion, and jubilant to her finger-tips. it was young summer now, and she answered back every pulse of the stirring earth with heart-beats of her own. eben was laughing.

"that's the way to do it," he was saying, in an exaggerated triumph. "why, you've got to talk to 'em till they think that bottle o' vanilla's the water o' life, an' they'll have to knife ye if they can't git it no other way."

"you're a born peddler," smiled lydia. then she asked, "how'd you happen to start out?" she had heard the simple reason many times; but she loved his talk, and her idle mind preferred old tales to new.

eben fell in with her mood, as one begins an accustomed story to a child.

"well," he said, and he sobered a little, as memory recalled him, "you know, when mother died, old betty stayed an' kep' house for me. an' when she died, this last spring, i kinder thought i'd git over it sooner if i traveled round a mite to see the sights. i didn't want to git too fur for fear i'd be sick on 't, like the feller that started off to go round the world, an' run home to spend the first night. you sleepy now?"

he had shrewdly learned that she liked long, dull stories to lull her into the swing of a nap.

[25]"no," said lydia drowsily. "you go on. then what?"

"well, so i got jim ross to take over the stock an' run the farm to the halves. i took along a few essences to give me suthin' to think about, an' when i got tired o' rovin' i expected to turn back home an' begin bachin' on 't same's i'd got to end. an' then i stopped at your mother's to kinder talk over old times when my mother was little; an' you come to the door an' let me in."

"eben," said lydia, out of her dream and with all her story-book knowledge at hand, "don't you s'pose 'twas ordered?"

"what?"

"don't you s'pose 'twas just put into your head to start out that way so 't you could come an' find—me?"

she spoke timidly, but eben answered with the bluff certainty he had in readiness for such speculations:—

"ain't a doubt of it. sleepy now?"

he turned and looked at her as she lay back against the little pillow he had bought for her on the way. the sun and wind had overlaid the delicate bloom of her cheek with rose. the morning damp had curled her hair into rings. something known as happiness, for want of a better word, hovered about the curves of her [26]mouth and looked shyly out from under her lids. eben felt his heart stir wonderfully. he bent toward her and spoke half breathlessly.

"say, lyddy, i don't know 's i knew half how pretty you were." then he laughed a little, as if he were ashamed. he was not a man of words, save only when he was joking. thus far his fondness for her had found expression in an unfailing service and in mute caresses. he spoke bluntly now, chirruping to the horse: "i dunno 's ever i see any eyes quite so blue—unless 'twas my first wife's."

it was as if a sponge had passed over the quivering beauty of the earth and wiped it out. for the moment lydia felt as if she were not his wife at all. at her silence, eben turned and glanced at her; but her eyes were closed.

"tired?" he asked fondly, and she faltered:—

"i guess so."

then, according to a tender custom, he put his arm about her and drew her to him, and while he thought she slept, she lay there, her eyes closed against his breast, and the hard certainty upon her of something to think about. blankness had seized upon her, not because he had married a woman before her, but because he had not told. possibly he had told her mother in some of their desultory talks and had forgotten to say more. the chill wonder of it sprang from [27]her learning it too late. she had to adapt herself to a new man. until now she had believed that it was spring with them, and that he had waited for her with an involuntary fealty, as she had done for him. they had every guerdon of young love, except that there were not so many years before them. but even that paled beside the triumphant sense that no boy or girl could possibly be as happy as they, with their ripened patience and sense of fun. a phrase came into her mind as she lay there against his heart and knew he was driving slowly to let her rest: "the wife of his youth." it hurt her keenly, and she caught a breath so sharp and sudden that he drew her closer, as one stirs a child to let it fall into an easier pose.

that day they stopped at an old-fashioned tavern in a drowsy town, and lydia, after dinner, where she talked quite gayly about the house and the garden and the farther hills, said she thought she would go upstairs and lie down a spell. eben looked at her with concern. she was always as ready as he for "poking about" new places.

"ain't you feelin' well?" he asked her.

"oh, yes," said lydia, "i'm all right. only i'm kinder sleepy. i guess this air makes me. it's higher up here than 'tis a few miles back."

"yes," said eben, "we've been kinder climbin' [28]up for some days. well, you go an' sleep it off. do you good. i'll have my pipe, an' then i'll mog round an' see 'f i can't work off a few bottles on the unsuspectin' populace."

when eben came home from his successful sales, he found a changeling. his wife was not so different in looks or words as in a subtle something he could not define. she laughed at his jokes, and even, in a gentle way, ventured pleasantries of her own; but a strange languor hung about her. it might have been called patience, an acceptance of a situation rather than her eager cheer in it.

"you tired?" he asked her over and over again that day, and she always answered:—

"mebbe i am, a mite."

so they settled down in the little tavern, and while eben took excursions round about to place his "trade," she stayed behind, and either shut herself upstairs or sat meditatively in the garden. what moved her now was an overwhelming curiosity. she wondered what the first wife had been like, whether she could make doughnuts, and, above all, if she had been pretty. sometimes she remembered, with a wild impulse to tell him because it seemed so desperately funny to her, the unhappy couple that had formed a part of her childhood's memories, who used to quarrel violently whenever the husband drank too much, [29]and his wife, in his helplessness, used to go through his pockets.

"anybody can bear 'most anything," he used to declare, as he steadied himself by the gate, in drunken majesty, and addressed the school-children in a ring, "but goin' through anybody's pockets. that's more'n anybody ought to be called upon to bear."

lydia smiled sorrowfully upon herself in the midst of her daze, at the wonder whether she also should be tempted to go through her husband's pockets, not thriftily, to save his purse, but to discover the portrait of his first wife. yet she had resolved to ask him nothing; and then, in the way of womankind, she opened her lips one day and said the thing she would not.

they were sitting in the garden under the pear tree, with beautiful old borders, all a lovely neglect, on both sides. lydia had been talking about flowers, and getting up now and then to pull a weed,—an ineffectual service where weeds were so plentiful,—and stopping to speak a word to a late sweet-william, as if it were a child. eben was smoking his pipe contentedly and watching her.

"you like 'em, don't you?" he said fondly, as she came back and took her chair again.

"i guess i do," said lydia. that day she felt particularly well and freed from the assaults of [30]memory. the sun was on her face and she welcomed it, and a light breeze stirred her hair. "mother always said i was bewitched over gardens."

"you shall have all the land you can take care of," he avowed, "an' you shall have a hired man of your own. i can foretell his name. it's eben jakes."

lydia laughed, and he went on: "we used to have a few beds, but when mother was taken away i kinder let it slip."

suddenly lydia felt her heart beating hard. something choked her, and her voice stuck in her throat.

"eben, how'd your mother look?"

"what say?" asked eben. he was shaking the ashes from his pipe, and the tapping of the bowl against his chair had drowned her mild attempt.

"how did your mother look?"

he pursed his lips and gazed off into the distance of the orchard. then he laughed a little at his own incompetence.

"i dunno 's i can tell. i ain't much of a hand at that. she was just kinder old an' pindlin' to other folks. but she looked pretty nice to me."

"ain't you got a photograph of her here with you?"

he shook his head.

[31]"i thought mebbe you'd carry one round."

"mother never had any real good picture," said eben meditatively. "i dunno 's she ever set for a photograph. she had an ambrotype taken when she was young, with kinder full sleeves an' her hair brought down over her ears. no, mother never had a picture that was any comfort to me."

then lydia dared her first approach.

"ain't you got any photographs here with you, any of your other folks? i'd like to know how they look."

he shook his head.

"no. they're all to home. you'll find 'em in the album on the centre-table. gee! i hope the house won't be all full o' dust. i never thought, when i set out, i should bring the quality back with me."

but she could not answer by a lifted eyelash the veiled fondness of his tone. all his emotion had this way of taking little by-paths, as if he skirted courtship without often finding the courage to enter boldly in. it was delightful to her, but at this moment she could not even listen. she was too busy with her own familiar quest. now she spoke timidly, yet with a hidden purpose.

"i think pictures of folks are a good deal of a comfort, don't you—after death?"

eben made no answer for a moment. he still [32]gazed reflectively outward, but whether it was into the future or his hidden past she could not tell.

"it's queer about dyin'," he said at last.

she answered him tumultuously:—

"what is?"

"why—" then he paused, as if to set his thought in order. "i can't tell jest what i mean. only folks can be here to-day an' there to-morrer. an' they can be all of a bloom of health, or handsome as a pictur'—an' lo ye! they're changed!"

a cold certainty settled upon her heart. the first wife had, then, been handsome. lydia did not know whether acquired knowledge was a boon or not. eben had risen, and was standing with his hands in his pockets, still looking into space. it seemed to her that he was miles away.

"an' i dunno which is the worst," he was saying, "to have 'em come down with a long sickness, or drop off sudden. i do, too. it's worse to see 'em suffer. but when they give right up afore your face an' eyes—"

he stopped, and lydia thought he shuddered. again she knew. the first wife had died suddenly, and the memory of the shock was too keen upon him to admit of speech. but he shook off reflection as if it had been the dust of the hour. now he turned to her, and the sweet recognition [33]of his glance was warming her anew. "don't you go an' play me any such trick," he said, with the whimsical creases deepening in his cheeks.

yet she thought his eyes were wet.

"what?"

"dyin'."

a new tenderness was born in her at the moment, seeing what he had endured.

"no," she wanted to say, "i hope you won't have to go through that twice." but she only shook her head brightly at him. "come," said she, "it's time to harness up."

"i'll drive down through that cross-road," said eben, "an' then i've finished up all them little byways. byme-by, when we feel like settin' out for good, we can pike right along the old boston road, an' that'll take us to aunt phebe's, an' so on home. but we won't start out till we're good an' ready. i guess you got kinder tired afore."

"i'm ready now," said lydia. the color was in her cheeks. she felt dauntless. at once, born somehow from this sober talk, she felt a melting championship of him, as if life had hurt him too keenly and she was there to make it up to him. henceforth she meant to be first and second wife in one.

"hooray!" called eben. he tossed up his [34]hat; and the tavern-keeper's wife, making pies by the kitchen window, smiled at him and shook her rolling-pin. "then we'll start off to-morrer, bright an' early. i don't know how you feel, mis' jakes, but i'm possessed to git home."

lydia, for her part, was soberly glad, yet there was a part of her anticipation that was incredible to her. for even after her spiritual uplift of the moment before, the first thought that throbbed into her mind, like a temptation, was that of the album on the centre-table.

they drove off in the morning brightness, and eben declared he had a good mind to give away his remaining essences and put for home as hard as he could pelt.

"we might cut right across country," he tempted himself. "no matter 'f we planned suthin' different. but then we couldn't see aunt phebe."

"you're real fond of her, ain't you?" asked lydia absently. she was wondering if aunt phebe would speak of his first wife.

"she was mother's only sister," said eben, in the deeper tone attendant on his mother's name. "she took care of mother in her last days. i guess we never had a mite o' family trouble but aunt phebe was there about as soon as she could board the train."

"eben," said his wife, in her timid way of [35]stealing on his confidence. it seemed now like a shy fashion of convincing him that she was worthy, if he would but let her, to know his heart.

"what is it?"

"don't you think some things—some troubles—are too hard to be talked about?"

"i guess they be," assented eben.

"we keep thinkin' an' thinkin' 'em over, but we can't speak. mebbe 'twould be better for us if we could."

"mebbe 'twould." then he pulled out his pipe, as he did when the chariot of his affections neared an emotional pass. eben was willing to graze a wheel by that abyss, but he skillfully avoided falling over.

they were climbing a long hill; and the horse, head down, sagged sleepily along, pulling faithfully. but at the top he halted, as if it seemed he knew what was below, and waited for their wonder. lydia's eyes were closed, and eben had drawn the first puff at his pipe.

"there," said he, "what think o' that?"

lydia opened her eyes and gave a little cry. they seemed to be at the top of everything,—winding roads, like ribbons, patches of green that were ample woods, three dotted villages, and, full flare in their faces, the sunset sky. the red and gold of it had spread and lavished until [36]the eye, to rest itself, was almost forced, for a calming glimpse, back again to the cold blue east. lydia looked and could not speak. eben knew too much even to glance at her. he felt all the wonder of it, and the pride, for it seemed to him that it was, in a way, his sky, because it was so much nearer home. they stayed there in silence while the beauty changed but never faded, and the horse dropped his head, to rest.

"well," said eben at last, dryly, "i dunno 's ever i see such a sky as that, unless 'twas some i used to see with my first wife."

for the first time he seemed cruel. a bitter thought shot up in lydia's heart that at every feast there was to be the unbidden guest. she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the sky had faded and the air was chill.

"i guess you're gittin' tired again," said eben tenderly. "well, we'll be to aunt phebe's by eight, an' she'll put you straight to bed."

the tears had wet her cheeks. they were the first she had shown him, and he looked at them with dismay. "hullo!" he cried, "hullo!" it was actual terror in his voice. "'tain't so bad as that!"

lydia straightened herself in the buggy and wiped away the tears with an impatient hand.

"i guess 'twas the sunset," she said tremulously. "i never see such a sky."

[37]"that all?" eben was much relieved. then he touched up the horse, and told him what a lot of oats were waiting in aunt phebe's barn. "if that's all," he said, giving his mind to lydia again, "you'll have to spend most o' your time in salt water. that's the kind o' sunsets we're goin' to have every night arter we get home. the doctor's ordered 'em."

lydia made herself laugh, and they talked no more until they drove up to a prosperous white house on the outskirts of the first village, and aunt phebe came to meet them. it was all a joyous tumult that night, and lydia went to bed early, with a confused sense that aunt phebe was very kind and that she had gold-bowed glasses and shook the floor when she walked, and that the supper was a product of expert cooking. eben was uproariously gay, in the degree of approaching home, and took aunt phebe about the waist to waltz with her, whereupon she cuffed him with a futile hand, remarking:—

"eben jakes, i'd be ashamed!"

lydia had a sense of being in a homely paradise where everything was pleasantly at one, yet that she, companioned by the unclassified memory of a woman whose place she held, had no part in the general harmony. next morning she overslept, and found herself alone. she heard eben's whistle from the barn and the guffaw of [38]the hired men, to whom he was telling pleasant tales, and there were women's voices from the kitchen, and the fragrance of frying ham. she dressed in haste, and when she went down the breakfast-table was ready, in great abundance, and everybody waiting by their plates: eben, aunt phebe and her mild, soft-spoken husband, and sarah, the spectacled spinster daughter, who looked benevolently dignified enough to be her mother's mother.

"late? i guess not," said aunt phebe, sinking into the chair behind the coffee-pot. "folks get up here when they're a mind to, an' when it comes to eben's wife—well, you can't say no more'n that in this house."

lydia took her place rather shyly, but when eben had found her hand under the tablecloth and given it a welcoming squeeze, she felt more than half at home. aunt phebe passed coffee, and beamed, and forgot to serve herself in pressing food upon the others; but when the first pause came, she leaned back and smiled at her new niece. lydia looked up. she met the smile and liked it. aunt phebe seemed a good deal more than a mother to the nice spinster daughter. she looked as if there were mother-stuff enough in her to pass around and nourish and bless the world. aunt phebe was speaking.

"now," said she, "i didn't have more'n half [39]a glimpse at you last night, lyddy, such a surprise an' all, an' i had this mornin' to look for'ard to. an' now i'm goin' to take my time an' see for myself what kind of a wife eben's be'n an' picked out."

she was laughing richly all through the words, and lydia, though she was blushing, liked the sound of it. she felt quite equal to the scrutiny. she knew the days of driving had given her a color, and she was not unconscious of her new blue waist. then, too, eben's hand was again on hers under the friendly cloth. aunt phebe looked, took off her glasses, pretended to wipe them, and looked again.

"well, eben," said she judicially, "i'll say this for ye, you've done well."

"pretty good-lookin' old lady, i think myself," said eben, with a proud carelessness. "course she's nothin' to what my first wife was at her age; but then, nobody'd expect that kind o' luck twice. aunt phebe, here's my cup. you make it jest like the first, or you'll hear from me."

lydia drooped over her plate. if eben had sought her hand then, she would have snatched it away from him. all the delicate instincts within her felt suddenly outraged. at last she acknowledged to herself, in a flash, how coarse-minded he must be to mingle the present with his sacred [40]past. but she started and involuntarily looked up. the spinster cousin was giggling like a girl.

"now you've got back," she was saying to eben. "now i know it's you, sure enough. he took that up when he wa'n't hardly out o' pinafores," she said to lydia.

"what?" lydia managed, through her anger at him.

"comparin' everything with his first wife. where'd he get it, mother?"

"why," said aunt phebe, "there was that old simeon spence that used to come round clock-mendin'. he was forever tellin' what his first wife used to do, an' eben he ketched it up, an' then, when we laughed at him, he done it the more. land o' love, lyddy, you chokin'?"

lydia was sobbing and laughing together, and eben turned in a panic from his talk with uncle sim, to pound her back.

"no, no," she kept saying. "i'm all right. no! no!"

"suthin' went the wrong way," commiserated aunt phebe, when they were all in their places again and lydia had wiped her eyes.

"yes," said lydia joyously, as if choking were a very happy matter. "it went the wrong way. eben, you pass aunt phebe my cup."

and while the coffee was coming she sought [41]out eben's hand again and turned to gaze at him with such tell-tale eyes that the spinster cousin, blushing a little, looked at once away, and wondered how it would seem to be so foolish and so fond.