Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1888-11-26
A Thanksgiving Story.

inviting house in all the region round,
and it stood q few PAGES from the
corner where the highways crossed
each other. Tt smiled all over with
many red-paned windows, and the
yard and the porch where hop-vines
grew, and the wide barn doors lay
open to the sun. 1t had been in the
Neal family for several generations.
The house was fashioned of material
that had withstood the touch of time
before which our modern dwellings
crumble so soon-and was good for
we'll titled and productive. John
Neal, the present occupant, had been
born therein forty-five or more years
before our story opens. Hardly more
than a boy he had gone with the vol
unteers to his country's aid when the
civil strife grew fiercest and her need
was greatest. At the wars close,
disabled, he had found such work as
he chose to do elsewhere, and for
years had visited the old homestead
only at rare intervals. In truth there
had been little to call him to his ma
tive town. An elder brother had
succeeded to the farm. His father
and mother had died and his sisters
married, and he missed face and a
form familiar in childhood, grown
dearer in youth. and in manhood still
remembered, loved and longed for.
But the Drews had moved west, Eliz-
abeth with them. They were having
hard times, he heard, and she, the
eldest, was the main stay of the al
most helpless household. Drifting
from place to place, as business or
inclination led him, he had at length
CHANGED upon them. The boys were
grown now, and things were better
with th, m. Elizabeth had grown old
and WON, as we'll she might under
her burdens, but she was Elizabeth
still, with the same sweet light in her
dark eyes, the same thrill in her voice.
! And so he had persuaded her to take
! the vows so long deferred, and help
gather up their scattered joys. The
brother who had lived on the eastern
home farm was anxious t. sell. The
Drews had come East, and no place
seemed to either John or Elizabeth /
so dear as that low house at the Cor
ners. Elizabeth had used a small /
legacy in repairing and furnishing,
stock had been bough', and not |
enough had remained of Johns earn
ings to pay for the place, so mort
gage had been given. 1t was not
large one; they were trying to pay it,
and Johns pension and the fam in
come made the interest ea y, even
after other necessary expenditures
from week to week.
But it irked them both. The place
did not seem rightfully theirs. Eliza
both found it especially trying, and
it was at her suggestion that they had
made unwonted effort, and this
Thanksgiving time of which [ write
found them getting together the last
dollars of the debt. The money lay
on the kitchen table, a struggling
heap of silver, bills and change. John
was counting it, while Elizabeth
stood with nervous, trembling fingers,
thin and warped and stained, touch
ing the sorted piles abstractedly.
''Five-that makes forty -five-two
hundred and forty-five. Now let's
see," and the brown, rough hands
clumsily assorted the debris of change.
zone, two-there is three-four,
twenty, thirty. fifty, seventy-five
cents, eighty, ninety, and there's a
dollar Five-and that makes out
the two hundred and fifty dollars" P"
"And here is fifty cents oVer,''
said Elizabeth, picking up the dimes
and pennies that remained. ''That
will get us half pound of tea; we
are all out, you know, and
''The rest will get some nails to
mend up the tie-up,'' put in her hus-
band briskly, slowing away the mon
ey in his leather wallet, and jingling
the loose coin in his pocket.
'sBut / thought said she hesitat-
ing, yet mildly insistent, ''we'd get
half gallon of molasses with that,
maybe, for pumpkin pies. We hain't
had any scarcely (
ssBother the molasses Can't we
get along without that? l won't buy I
two quarts
s'But for Thanksgiving-'
"Bother There's always some ;
thing / amt had no peace for six
months, no, for two years, a-raising
that money. Nothing would do but
it must come, and anybody might
have taken things little easier" I
''But we thought we'd rather do it,
'sYou thought so; | wish''-but
what he wished remained unheard by
Elizabeth for the slamming of the
outer door as he went out to harness
to go to town, for it had been agreed
that he should drive down and settle ,
up that very Tuesday-was all that
came back to her as the completion /
of the sentence.
Her tired face grew little paler,
and her brow darkened. Hardly in {
the six years of their married life had
her husband spoken so carelessly and
roughly. They had been singularly {
happy in their late union-singularly
gentle, too, with each other. All !