The Newtown bee. (Newtown, Conn.) 1877-current, 1898-12-02
The Home Circle.
Mrs Derlar's Reasons For
Thanksgiving.
HARRIET PRESCOTT sPoFFoRD IN THE
INDEPENDENT.

1t was the night before Thanksgiving
Mrs Derlar had had all her plants pottec
and brought in long ago, and some Of
them were blooming In her windows now
the crab.cactus fairly alive with its lonG
and lovely carmine flowers that had s
such sunshiny world, as they tumbled
out their creamy stamens; one rose Just
about TO blow, and a ro3e-geranlum al.
ready making the room rich with sum.
merry fragrance. The house was warm
ly banked with gravel and with green
hemlock boughs laid over the boarding
the vegetables and the apples were in the
cellar, enough of them for herself and
for some others; her preserves, and iel-
lies, and chow chow, and various strange
sauces, of which she alone had the secret,
would have made your mouth water had
you gone into her pantry; her pork was
sailed down, her enlargement made, her
mince-meat not only made but baked in
pies OF tiaky crust, the best of which
was going round to the minister tonight,
and the second-best to the school teacher
her house was swept and garnished from
garnet to cellar; her coal was in, her
kindlings were chopped, her barrel of
cider was fixing at the bung, her stock
ing was set up, and she had nothing be-
fore her now but her daily tasks and her
simple pleasures.
Mrs Derlar, as you may suppose, was a
widow Of comfortable means for her sta
ton in life, which had been that of the
village milliner. She had married, when
about thirty, a Frenchman who had come
to the little mountain town, and who,
walking by her place and glancing over
the garden wall, had so liked the look of
things that he had asked to be allowed a
lodging in her house; and he had never
left it.
Indeed, so far from leaving it, he one
day proposed to her that be should re-
main in it as her husband.
Never was woman more amazed In her
life than this little person. She had re-
garded her ledger, the more she knew OF
him, as being Of some superior world to
hers; it had never entered her head that
Mr. Derlar could have given her second
thought, -Derlar was the name by which
he went, the townspsople never having
been quite able to appropriate the sylla-
bles following the De la of his appella-
tion, and at first calling him that Mr. De
la what-and-ever, they had gradually
dropped this and condoned that and cor
rupted the De la into Derlar and had let
1t go at that, as they said, and then had
slowly forgotten that he had any other
name, and had given him thereby az
complete disguise as any one could have
required, II requiring any.
s'Do you--do you really know what
you are saying?" stammered the little
woman, as she stood before him, first
blushing like the roses on the window
trellis behind her, and turning very white.
eyes," said Mr. Derlar, who had mas
tered English very sufficiently. "Per-
fectly. Why not? have come to your
village here in the hills to spend the rest
of my days. am lonely. am friend
less"
The little woman took an impulsive
step forward. II fnd," he continued,
"a woman who seems to me very suita-
ble--a pleasant--companion--a good
friend. Iexpect but little more In my
wife than that she shall be my good
friend. II seems TO me--pardon me il /
take liberty-shat you are not In the