Aunt Ann, be we goin' to the spellin' to-night at the Block schoolhouse?”
Jim Lee always called his wife “Aunt Ann.” So did everybody except her daughter Lydia. She called Aunt Ann “Mother.” But to Jim Lee and the other inhabitants of Stowe Township, she was “Aunt Ann Lee.”
As Jim Lee asked Aunt Ann the question, he threw down the armful of maple wood and retreated to the back door to stamp the snow off his boots.
“I want to know,” he said, “so's to do the chores in time.”
Aunt Ann was chopping mince-meat. She was a clean, beautiful woman of the buxom sort. Her eyes were very blue, while her hair was very black with not a strand of silver, for all her forty-seven years. Jim Lee held Aunt Ann in great respect. Aunt Ann on her part was a tender soul and true, although Jim Lee had found her quite firm at times.
“Now and then she's a morsel hard on the bit,” said Jim Lee, descriptively.
Perhaps the two old-maid Spranglers meant the same thing when they said: “There never was a body with blue eyes and black hair who didn't have the snap in 'em.”
“Yes,” replied Aunt Ann to Jim Lee's question “yes, of course we'll go. I've got to see Mrs. Au about some rag carpets she's weavin' for me, and she be there. Better get the Morgan colt and the cutter ready, father; we'll go in that.”
“That'll only hold two,” said Jim Lee. “How Lide goin' to go?”
“Lide's goin' with Ed Church. She's over to Jenn Ruple's now; she and Jen are goin' to choose up for the spellin' bee. But she'll be back in time, and Ed Church is comin' for her at half-past seven.”
Jim Lee's face showed that he didn't like Ed Church He said nothing for five minutes, and pulling off his kip-skin boots began to give them a coat of tallow.
“Where's Ezra?” at last he asked. Ezra was the heir of the house of Lee. His age was eleven; he was twenty.
“Ezra's down cellar sortin' over that bin of peach blows,” said Aunt Ann, busy with her mince-me; and chopping-bowl; “they'd started to rot.”
“I wanted to send him to the Corners for the mail,” suggested Jim Lee, as he kneaded the wax tallow into the instep of his boot to soften the leather.
0341
“You'd better hitch up the colt a mite early,” answered
Aunt Ann, “and go to the Corners before we start to the spellin'. Ezra's got to churn as soon; he's done the peachblows.”
There was another pause. Jim Lee softly drew on his freshly tallowed boots, and then stood up an tried them by raising his heels one after the other bending the boots at the toes as if testing a couple of Damascus sword blades.
“I don't like this here Ed Church sparkin' our Lide,” remarked Jim Lee at last; “bimeby they'll want to get married.”
“Father!” said Aunt Ann, raising her blue eyes with a look of cold criticism from the mince-meat she was massacring.
“Has he asked Lide yet?” said Jim Lee.
“No, he ain't,” replied Aunt Ann, “but he's goin' to.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know?” repeated Aunt Ann, as she set the chopping-bowl on the kitchen table, and turned to put a few select sticks of maple into the oven to the end that they become kiln-dried and highly inflammable; “how do I know Ed Church is goin' to marry Lide? Humph! I can see it.”
“I'm goin' to put a stop to it,” said Jim Lee. “This Church boy is goin' to keep away from Lide.”
“Father, you're goin' to do nothing of the kind,” and Aunt Ann's eyes began to sparkle. “You can run the farm and Ezra, father; I'll run Lide and the house. The only person who's goin' to have a syllable to say about Lide's marryin' when the time comes, is Lide herself. If she wants Ed Church she's goin' to have him.”
“Aunt Ann, I'm s'prised at you upholdin' for this Church boy!” Jim Lee threw into his tone a strain of strong reproof. “Ed Church drinks.”
“Ed Church don't drink,” retorted Aunt Ann sharply.
“How about that time two years ago last summer? Waren't Ed Church drunk over at the Royalton Fair?”
“Yes, he was,” answered Aunt Ann, “and that's the only time. But so was my father drunk once at a barn-raisin' when he was a boy, for I've heerd him tell it; and I guess my father, William H. Pickering, was as good as any Lee who ever greased his boots. One swallow don't make a summer, and one drunk don't make a drunkard. Ed Church told me himself that he ain't took a drop since.”
“I'm goin' to break up this nonsense between him and Lide, at any rate,” said Jim Lee. His mood was dogged, and it served to irritate Aunt Ann.
“All you've got ag'inst Ed Church, father,” said Aunt Ann, “is that his father voted ag'in you for pathmaster, and I'm glad he did. What under the sun you ever wanted to be pathmaster for, and go about ploughin' up good roads to make 'em bad, was more'n I could see. I'm glad you was beat.”
“I'm goin' to stop this Church boy hangin' 'round Lide, jest the same,” was the closing remark of Jim Lee. At this point he went out to the barn to put some straw in the cutter and harness the Morgan colt. Aunt Ann turned again to her duties.
“Father is so exasperatin',” remarked Aunt Ann, as she poured some boiling water over a dozen slices of salt pork to “freshen it,” in the line of preparing them for the evening frying-pan. “He'll find out, though, that I'll have a tolerable lot to say about Lide's marriage.”
