The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1877-03-28
ROMANCE OF A BARN-YARD.

IHarper's Monthly for February.l
We were all sitting on the piazza, except
those of us that were swinging in the ham,
mocks among the trees; the wind was
blowing over us, the birds were darting low
here aIiG there, and the bantams and spring
chickens and the big black cochins were
clucking and picking in the grass watched
over by the old red King Charles, who re-
deemed us from vulgarity, and it was
scene of domestic comfort, Aunt Helen
said. Aunt Helen, by the way, became
very pleasant addition to the comfortable
appearance of the scene, as she said il. She
was Just as plump as a woman ought to be
when her next birthday is, may be, her 10th.
She had a soft flush on her cheek, where the
dimple was yet as fresh as when she was a
girl, and the flush deepened sometimes into
a real damask; her teeth were like rows of
seed corn for whiteness, and her eyes were
just as brown as brook water; only her hair
that was quite white. Lovely hair, though,
for all that. She parted it evenly over her
low, level forehead and above the yet black
eyebrows, and we all declared, every day of
our lives, that Aunt Helen was a beauty.
II used to be-" she had replied, "but that's
all gone now. / have put my youth behind
me-.
Perhaps she had. But we young people
used to think differently when we saw Mr..
Thornton coming up the road, and Aunt
Helen's eyes resolutely bent on her work,
but her color mounting and mounting. till
the reddest rose that ever burned in the sun
shine was not so rich. Mr.. Thornton saw it,
too, no doubt, for he always looked and
looked intently all the way by. But the
truth was-I shall have to tell you all about
1t if tell you any-that when Aunt Helen
was 20 years younger she and Mr.. Thornton
were lovers, as they had been lovers ever
since they could remember. They had built
their house at last and her wedding dress
was made. If she was a beauty he was ev-
cry inch her mattel know he was, because
he is to-day-one of the men it does you good
to see, who look as if they could hold up the
world. if need be, and inspire you with con-
hdence in their power. Now what in the
world do you suppose that, with their house
furnished, and the cake baked and a dozen
years of intimate affection to bind them,
Aunt Helen and Mr.. Thornton found to
quarrel about? She declared she wouldn't
keep hensl And he declared that he
wouldn't keep housed That was the whole
of it, to condense the statement; one word
led to another, and another led to more, and
finally, in a towering passion himself he
told Aunt Helen that she had better learn
to control her temper If she did not want
to be vixen entirely, and Aunt Helen took
the ring off her finger and laid it on the ia
BILE without word and sailed out of the
room, and refused TO see him when he called
in the morning and sent back his letter uE-
opened, and cut the wedding cake and put
some of il on the tea table and sent the rest
to the fair. Perhaps on the whole, Mr..
Thornton might have been right. Exactly
one week from that night Mr.. Thornton was
married to Mary Mayhem, an inoffenSive
little body who would have married
anybody that asked her. and she went into
the house that had been furnished accord
ing to Aunt Helen's taste; and Immediately
afterward hen house of the most fsncirul
description of architecture, with gilded
vanes and scarlet chandeliers bristling all
over rose on the hill behind his house, full
of fancy fowl, and the little lawn was all
alive with its overlooking, and you could mt
go by the place without meeting flock of
cropple crown, or partridge Cochin, or white
Leghorn. or black Spanish, flying up on each
separate piece of fence to crow out Mr.
Thornton's triumph-reversing the old ira
ditiOn of the Grower, and crying. mo women
rule herer
They say Mr.. Thornton grew very old in
few years His inOffensiye little thing of
a wife turned out to be a smart termagant,
who led him a pretty dance. Perhaps she
was dissatisfied with her piece of heart;
but then she knew that was all when she
took it. He treated her always gently
perhaps feeling he had done her some
wrong in marrying her-and gratified her
every wish, although, having cared nothing
for her in the beginning it is doubtful il he
cared any more for her in the end. The end
came after eighteen years when Mrs. Thorn
ton was killed in railroad COLI
sion and her husband was left with
four children on his hands, rude, noisy, i'll
faring cubs all the neighbors said. IL
Mr.. Thornton had ever impatiently CHANGED
to think that his punishment had lasted
long enough, he thought now it was just be-
ginning when he found himself alone with
those children. He wondered that his wife
had any temper left at all. He grew more
bent, more vexed and worried, every day,
and one would hardly have recognized,
people said, the dark and splendid Stephen
Thornton of his youth. in this middleaged
gray-haired man, and yet, to our eyes, he
was still quite remarkable-lOOkingp person
perhaps more so from our associating him
with the poetry in Aunt Helen's life, and
making him an object of wonder as to
whether or not now they would ever come
together again.
But there was little chance of that. We
had met Mr.. Thornton elsewhere, but he
had never come across our threshold since
the day he went out with his brides ring
And Aunt Helen's popularity was that she
never forgot. Could she, then, forget the
words he spoke to her in his anger? Could she
ever forget his marrying another woman in
less than week 1t had been in that week
and few following that her hair had turned
white. She had suffered inexpressibly; she
bad never slept night; but she had kept up
a gay face. Perhaps she would have sui
fered longer il it had not been for our grow
ing up about her. Her life was thus filled,
every moment of it; she had but very little
time to be lonely TO brood or mourn. She
forgot herself in us. 1t gave her q quiet
happiness and kept her comedy. And then
she was too proud; whenever the thought
thrust up its head, she shut the lid down, as
one might say. and sat on it.