Connecticut western news., 1888-02-29
MISS BECKY'S HOME;

Miss Becky was going to the "Old Ladies' home" at last. It was a sorry fact, but there was nothing else for her to do, it seemed. Who would think of offering any other homo to a poor, almost helpless old woman who had outlived her usefulness. Having passed her days in other peoples houses, so to speak, she might not mind it as much, perhaps, as more fortunate being.
 "Yes," she said, "there's vacancy in the 'Old Ladies' home,' and the hundred dollars that Parson Amory left me will pay my way Tn, but it wouldn't last long if began to spend it. you know, and shall have warm bed and my regular meals without worrying about where the next one's coming from. I'm 'most tired worrying about the ways, and means. Seems as though 1 had been about it all my life; ever since father was taken with 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 it'll draw my fingers up so that I can't use them soon, it doesn't seem as if there was any thing left for me in this world but the home-and ought to be thankful for that"
 Miss Bcckey had had other expecta- tions in her day, when young Larry Rogers met her and carried her basket; when 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 whip poor-will complain and startled the fire-fies in 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 bloom on her cheek; but, al- though the rheumatism had bent her figure and rendered her more or less hope- less at times, yet her dark, velvety eyes looked out like soft stars, and the ghost of dimple still hickered on her cheek and chin in spite of her sixty odd years. Miss Becky's father had been the dis trict school teacher in those far-off days of her girlhood. He had taught her the simple lore of his command, but it was Larry Rogers who had taught her music hour after hour In the empty schoolhouse; they had practiced together while he wrote the score on the black board.
 I But all this had not sufficed to enable .her to earn livelihood. Her educa- tion, musical and otherwise had stopped short of any commercial value. In those days she never expected to earn her living by the sweat of her brow. Larry was going to give her everything. How trivial the little quarrel seemed to. day which circumvented this final re solve of his. But what magnitude fl had assumed at the time. On his re turn from trip to a ncighboring city some busybody had whispered to Larry that Miss Becky had been seen driving with Squire Eustis' son, behind his trotters Sam was just home from col lege, a harum-scarum fellow, they said, who made love right and left and gambled bit; and when Larry re- preached her with it she had not de nied; she had simply said: ''What them If you choose to listen to gossip rather than wait till you"
 ''But you didn't tell me, and rvt been here week."
 'T had forgotten all about it till yor reminded me-" said Becky.
 'It's such an everyday affair for 70, to drive with Sam Eustls"-which in credulity so stung Becky that she would not condescend to explain that she hat carried some needle-work up to Squir Eustis', which she had been doing fo his wife, and that as she left to wall home Sam was just starting off with hi smart schaise and new dapple grays, ant the squire had said, "Take Miss Beck, home, Sam, and show her their paces;
 and how she had been ashamed to re fuse their kindness, although prefer ing to walk a thousand times; an, how, once in the chaise, Sam had bee the very pink of courtesy, and begge her to drlve over with him to Parso } Amory's, three miles out of her way "that Lucy Amory may see you didn disdain my company. For you see,
 said Sam, who was not as black as h was painted, or as many liked to sur pose, 'Lucy can make me what sh 5 will; without her shall be nothin l and nobody; but they've told her a ) kinds of wild things about me; they V 3 told her she might as we'll jump int l the river as marry such scapegrace 5 And, perhaps, if I made her littl
 iealous-you know there's no harm l
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