The Press., 1884-07-10
CHANGED HER MIND.

it seemed. Who would think of offering any other home to poor, almost helpless old woman who had outlived her useful ness ? Having passed her days Tn other peoples houses, so to speak, she might not mind it as much, perhaps, as a more fortunate being.
 s'Yes,' she said there's vacancy in the Old Ladies' Home, and the hundred dollars that Parson Amory left me will pay my way in, but it wouldn't last me long if began to spend it, you know, and I shall have warm bed and nay regular meals without worrying about where the next one's coming from. I'm most tired worrying about ways and means. Seems as though had been about 1t all my life |: ever slnce father was taken with the heart disease hearing the class in algebra. Now that the rheumatism has got the better of me, so that I can't work in cold weather, and the doctor says i'll draw my fingers up so that can't use them soon, 1t doesn seem as if there was any thing left for me in this world but the Home-and 1 ought to be thankful for that P
 Miss Becky had other expectations Ill her heyday, when young Larry Rogers met her and carried her basket /; whom his strong arm paddled her down the broad river to church on Sunday mornings ; when they sang together in the choir from the same hymn book when they loitered homeward in the fragrant summer dusk, and heard the whippoorwill coaplaln, and started the ire fys i'll the hedges as they brushed by. It sometimes seemed to Miss Becky as if all this had happened in another planet. She was young then, with a bloom on her cheek but although the rheumatism has bent her figure sud rendered her more or less helpless at times, yet her dark, velvety eyes looked out like soft stars, and the ghost of dimrle still hickered on cheek and chin in spite of hel sixty odd years. Miss Becky's father had been the district school teacher ln those far off days of her girlhood. He had taught her the simple lore at his command, but it was Larry Rogers who had taught her music, hour after hour, ln the empty old school house they had practiced to, gether, while he wrote the score on the bla kboard. But all this had not sufficed to enable her to earn a livelihood. Hel education, musical and otherwise, had stopped short of any commercial value. Tn those days she had never expected tG earn her living by the sweat of her brow. Larry was going to give her every thing. How trivial the little quarrel seemed, to- day, which eircumvented this fine resolve of hls But what magnitude 1t had as- sumed at the time On his return from a trip to a neighboring city, some busy body had whispered to Larry that Miss Becky had been seen driving with Squire Eustiss son Sam behind his trotters. Sam was just home from college a harum scarum fellow they said, who made love right and left and gambled bit and when Larry reproached her with it she had not denied she had simply said "W hat then If you choose to listen to gossip 1ather than wait till tell you"
 s'But you didn't tell me, and I've been home a week.
 sI had forgotten all about it till you re- minded me, said Becky.
 ''It's such an everyday affair for you to drive with Sam Eustis ''-which in- credulity so stung Becky that she would not condescend to explain that she had carried some needlcwork up to Squire Eustis's which she had been doing for his Sam was just starting off with his smart chaise and new dapplu- grays, and the squire had said, 'sTake Miss Becky home, Sam, and show her their paces ;'' and how she had been ashamed to refuse the kind ness, although preferring to walk thous- and times; and how once in the chaise Sam had been the pink of courtesy, and had begged her to drive with him to Par son Amory's, three miles out of her way, 'That Lucy Amory may see that you don't disdain my company, For you see" said Sam, who was not as black as he was painted as many liked to suppose, ''Lucy can make me what she will :; without hel shall be nothing and nobody; but they I've told her all kinds of wild things about me they've told her she might as we'll jump into the river as marry such scrapegi ace. And perhaps if made her little jealous
 you know there's no harm in that, is there All's fair in. love and perhaps, if the old folks see me driving about with Miss Becky Thorne, my stock may go up, and I may be saved from the burning, as Parson Amory says" And Becky had consented how could she refuse to do a service for such true lover So slight a thing too She had often since traversed the same road on foot, on her daily rounds of toll and mercy. Sam Eustis had mar rled Lucy Amory years ago, and was the foremost man in the county to-day. Strange how that friendly drive had inter- fered with Miss Becky's prospects how the simple fact of carrying home Mrs Eustis's s needlework should have determir- ed her fate, and devoted her to life of hardship and the 'sOd Ladies' Home" at the end Talk of trihes Poor Miss Becky ]! she remembered that once or twice the opportunity had offered when she might have made it up with Larry; bnt pride, or a sort of reserve had locked her lips Larry ought to know that she was above silly flirtatons. Once, when they met at Lucy Amory's wedding, when they all went out into the orchard while the bride planted young tree, and the guests looked for four leaved clovers she had found herself whether by accident or de- sign she could not tell-on the grass be- side Larry their fingers met over the same lucky clover, and their eyes met above if, ,sand for an instant she had 1t on her tongne's end to confess all about the drive and it's result, to put pride ill her pocket, but just then Nell Amory called to Larry :-
 "Oh a horrid spider Ion my arm, Larry Kill him quick-do! Oh-oh -oh shall die-I shall faint" And that was the end of it,
 The old orchard, with its fragrant quince bushes it's guarded apple trees, its four leaved .clovers was thing of the past cotton mill thundered there all day long where Che birds built and the trees bour geoned 30 odd years ago. It nc longer blossomed, except in Miss Becky's mem ory. She had turned her thoughts to rais- ing plants, when she was left to her own resources, but one cruel winters night