The Warner sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1885-1???, 1886-08-13

but she wouldn't-Ned'd be so wor.
ried, she said, if he came home unex-
pected to find the little cottage empty.
After a bit they began to talk a
great deal about the ship, and old
Squire Jones would GO down to the
postoffice every day and then over to
the tavern to see if there was any
news. He told folks that asked that
Nanny Dawson never said one word
with her lips when he stopped at her
door, but her eyes, looking out of the
face that had lost all it's pretty color,
would ask him the same question day
after day with an awful hungriness
that made him sick.
1t was two years after she had hung
around Ned's neck and bade him good
by, that Nanny shut up the little house
and went back to her fathers house,
a grave, almost hard looking woman.
She wasn't much over 20 then, and
you would have said she was 35.
Not the boldest man or woman ever
dared to speak to her of her husband,
and in some way the few folks who
called her by her first nameg got to say
ing Hannah" perhaps, because it
suited the silent mistress of the farm,
in her black dress, better than the
pet name did, that had sounded
so loving from the young husbands
lips.
Only month or so after the Squire
died Hannah took an old cousin
to live with her. They might have
lived on forever-the two lonely wo-
men---if it hadn't been that Deacon
Willis had lost his wife quite a spell
back. He was a good man and a
kind husband, but he couldn't 60 on
mourning forever and his six children
running wild. So up to the farm he
went and asked Mrs. Dawson if she
would come and be mother to his
children.
1t was cute in him to put it that
way. He must have known she
couldn't bear to hear the word wife.
At fi1st she was almost angry, but he
said: "We've both got our dead
there amt no call for us to forget
them-but you'll take hold of my
children, and I'll always be kind to
you"
Then she consented to marry him,
and after the old farm was rented,
there was a quiet wedding, and she
and the old cousin moved down to
the deacon's. Now, l don't hold
much with stepmothers, but / say she
must have been q good one. The
children were well looked after, and
happy too; but if there ever was
grave and quiet woman it was the
deacon's Wife-the widow Dawson that
was.
In little while her child was born,
and by hard begging the father got
leave to call her Nancy. AS time
went on the Willis children grew up
two had died-got married, and move
ed of, until only Nancy was left in the
old house, the veriest sunbeam you
ever saw, and the JOY of her fathers
heart.
| met her first here in Peabody on a
visit, and what with her sweet voice,
her pretty face, and her laugh like q
silver bell-why, in a week didn't
know If was on my head or my heels.
She didn't catch the fever as quick as
did, and when she went back /
couldn't get any kind of an answer,
and just tell you, ! felt bad. How
ever | sent her few papers, and then
some novels and book OF poems,
and ut last got up my courage and
went over myself Well, if thought
her sweet before / don't know what
to call her in her own home, and the
deacon was nice old man, but will
own up to you that her mother gave
me shock the first time saw her.
She was handsome woman, but
all the time talked to her / had
sort of q feeling that she was dead
her eyes, the same blue that Nanny's
were, were the stillest, most unchang-
ing that lever saw in a. living face.
She was kind as kindcould be--there
was little child, the deacon grand
that child, was always holding he-
skirts or climbing on her lap. She
pat it gently, kind Of smooth it down
In q tender way and then sigh softly
not annoyingly y--and turn away.
i never saw a man that set more
store by his wife, and Nanny thought
there was no one like her mother-bu
even her merry ways and sayings never
brought q smile to those grave, quiet
lips
After I'd won my wife and brought
her home here used sometimes to
ask her if she had never seen her
mother look any different shed say,
no, no, never In her life--and one day
she told me what I have told you.
We'd been married over year and
our little Charley was beginning to
crow and Jump when he saw me COM
ing, when the old dsacon died, and we
went over to the funeral. All the VIII
lises came home with their husbands
and wives and children, and II the
widow had been their own mother
they couldn't have seemed to think