Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1897-03-12

to come seemed to her to be seeping in i,
and it made her feel "creepy.n In her
fancy she petted the furniture as she "set
it to rights, saying mentally that it would
be a long time before the house would
have her care again. To Mrs Hucks every
bit of furniture brought up its separate
recollection, and there was Ratchet
SCARED chair in the kitchen which had
come with her in the wagon from Ohio.
Mrs. Hucks felt that she could not leave
that chair. All the while she was singing
softly, as she went about her simple tasks.
Her husband was puttering around the
barnyard with the dog under his feet He
was repeating, for the twentieth time,
the instructions to a neighbor about the
care of the stock, when it occurred to him
to go into the house and dress After this
was accomplished, the old couple paused
outside the front door while Colonel Iucks
| fumbled with the key.
As they went down the road, each was
loath to go and leave the place without
their care. Their ragged, uneven flow of
talk was filled with more anxiety about
the place which they were leaving than it
was with the joys anticipated at their
| journeys end. Mrs. Hucks kept reverting
in her mind to her recollection of the bed
room, which she had left in disorder. The
parlor and the kitchen formed a mental
picture in the housewives fancy, which did
not leave space for speculations about the
glories into which she was about to come
In the cars Colonel Hucks found himself
leaning across the aisle, Dragging mildly
about Kansas for the benefit of a travelling
man from Cincinnati. When the colonel
and his wife spread their supper on their
knees in the Kansas City Union Depot, the
recollection that it was the little buff
Cochin pullet which they were eating
made Mrs. Hucks very homesick The
colonel, on being reminded of this, was
meditative also.
They arrived at their destination in the
night. Mrs. Hucks and the women of the
homestead refreshed old acquaintance in
the bedroom and kitchen, while the colonel
and the men sat stitfly in the parlor and
called the roll of the dead and the absent
In the morning, while he was waiting for
his breakfast, Colonel Hucks went for a
prowl down in the COW lot 1t seemed to
him that the creek which ran through the
lot was dry and ugly. He found stone
upon which as a boy he had stood and
fshed. He remembered il as huge
boulder, and he had told his chill
dren wonderful tales about its great
size. 1t seemed to him that it had worn
away one half in 30 years. The moss on
the river bank was faded and old, and the
beauty for which he had looked was
marred by thousand irregularities, which
he did not recall in the picture of the place
that he had carried in his memory since he
left it.
Colonel Hucks trudged up the bank from
the stream with his hands clasped behind
him, whistlug 30 Lord. remember me. "
and trying to reconcile the things he had
seen with those he had expected to find
At breakfast he said nothing of his puzzle.
but as Mrs. Hucks and the colonel sat in
the parlor alone, during the morning.
while their cousins were arranging to take
the Kansas people over the neighborhood
in the buggy Mrs. Hucks said
Father, | have been lookin' out the
window, and | see they've had such a
dreadful drought here. See that grass
there; it's as short and dry-and the
ground looks burneder and crackeder than
it does in Kansas
"Uhm, yes,' replied the colonel Il
had noticed that myself. Yet the crops
seem pretty fair yield this year"
AS the buggy in which the two families
were riding rumbed over the bridge the
colonel, who was sitting in the front seat,
said:
'Lookie there, mother, they've got a
new mill-smaller'n the old mill, too" To
which his cousin responded, bill Hucks,
what's got into you, anyway? That's the
same old mill, where me and you used to
steal pigeons"
The colonel looked closer, and drawled
out, "Well, | be doggoned! What makes
1t look so small: Amt it smaller mother"
he asked, as they crossed the mill-race
that seemed to the colonel to be diminutive
affair compared with the roaring mill-race
in which as boy he had caught minnows.
The party rode on thus for half an hour,
chatting leisurely, when Mrs Hucks, who
had been keenly watching the scenery for
five minutes, pinched her husband and
cried enthusiastically as the buggy was de
scending a little knoll
Here It's, fathrr. This is the place. "
What place." asked the colonel, who
was head over heels in the tariff.
Don't you know, William" replied his
wife, with tremble in her voice which
the woman beside her noticed.
Every one in the buggy was listening.
The colonel looked about him; then, turn
ing to the woman beside his wife on the
back seat, he said:
''This is the place where l mighty nigh
got tipped over trying to drive two horses
to a sleigh with lines between my knees
Mother and me have remembered it, some
way, ever since"
And the old man stroked his grizzled
beard, and tried to smile on the wrong side
of his face, that the women might see his
Joke. They exchanged meaning glances
when the colonel turned away, and Mrs.
Hucks was proudly happy. Even the dull |
ness of the color of the grass, which she |
had remembered as luscious green, did not
sa dden her for half an hour.
When the two Kansas people were alone |
that night, the colonel asked:
Don't it seem kind of dwarfed here to !
what you expected it would bel Seems to |
ne like it's all shrivelled, and worn out, !
and old. Everything's got dust on it. |
The grass by the road is dusty. The trees
hat used to seem so tall and black with |
shade are just nothing like what they used
% be. The hill I've thought of as Young
don't seem to be as big as our
bluff Blackjack home"
Kansas was home to them now. For 30 |
ears the struggling couple on the prairie
lad kept the phrase back home" sacred
o Ohio. Each felt thrill at the house
lold blasphemy, and both we're glad that
he colonel had said "back home" and that
meant Kansas.
care you sorry you come, father" said
IRIS. Hucks, as the colonel was about to
all into doze.
81 don't know; are you" he asked.
''Well, yes; l guess l am. haven't no
eart for this, the way it is, and I've some
way lost the picture had fixed in my mind
f the way it was. l don't care for this,
nd yet it seems like do, too. Oh, l wish