These messages "old Dick" delivered, but wisely refrained from telling
how his mother feared he had not chosen wisely, that a young lady with
Boston notions was not the wife to make a Western man very happy.
Neither did he tell her of an interview he had with Mrs. Jones, who had
always evinced a motherly care over him since her daughter's death, and
to whom he had dutifully communicated the news of his intended marriage.
It was not what Mrs. Jones had expected. She had watched Richard's
upward progress with all the pride of a mother-in-law, lamenting often
to Mrs. Markham that poor Abigail could not have lived to share his
greatness, and during the term of his judgeship, when he stayed mostly
in Camden, the county seat, she had, on the occasion of her going to
town with butter and eggs, and chickens, taken a mournful pleasure in
perambulating the streets, and selecting the house where Abigail might,
perhaps, have resided, and where she could have had her cup of young
hyson after the fatigue of the day, instead of eating her dry lunch of
cheese and fried cakes in the rather comfortless depot, while waiting
for the train. Richard's long-continued bachelorhood had given her
peculiar pleasure, inasmuch as it betokened a continual remembrance of
her daughter; and as her youngest child, the blooming Melinda, who was
as like the departed Abigail as sisters ever are to each other ripened
into womanhood, and the grave Richard spoke oftener to her than to the
other maidens of the prairie village, she began to speculate upon what
might possibly be, and refused the loan of her brass kettle to the
neighbor whose husband did not vote for Richard when he ran for member
of Congress. Melinda, too, had her little ambitions, her silent hopes
and aspirations, and even her vague longings for a winter in Washington,
As the Markham house and the Jones house were distant from each other
only half a mile, she was a frequent visitor of Richard's mother, always
assisting when there was more work than usual on hand and on the
occasion of Richard's first going to Washington ironing his shirts and
packing them herself in the square hair trunk which had called forth
Ethelyn's ire. Though she did not remember much about "Abby," she knew
that, had she lived, Richard would have been her brother; and somehow he
seemed to her just like one now, she said to Mrs. Markham, as she hemmed
his pocket handkerchiefs, working his initials in the corner with pink
floss, and upon the last and best, the one which had cost sixty-two and
a half cents, venturing to weave her own hair, which was long, and
glossy, and black, as Abigail's had been. Several times a week during
Richard's absence, she visited Mrs. Markham, inquiring always after "the
Judge," and making herself so agreeable and useful, too, in
clear-starching and doing up Mrs. Markham's caps, and in giving receipts
for sundry new and economical dishes, that the good woman herself
frequently doubted if Richard could do better than take the black-eyed
Melinda; and when he told her of Ethelyn Grant, she experienced a
feeling of disappointment and regret, doubting much if a Boston girl,
with Boston notions, would make her as happy as the plainer Melinda, who
knew all her ways. Something of this she said to her son, omitting, of
course, that part of her thoughts which referred to Melinda. With Mrs.
Jones, however, it was different. In her surprise and disappointment she
let fall some remarks which opened Richard's eyes a little, and made him
look at her half amused and half sorry, as, suspending her employment of
paring apples for the dinner pie she put the corner of her apron to her
eyes, and "hoped the new bride would not have many airs, and would put
up with his mother's ways.