The Brimming Cup - Page 26/61

Marsh laughed out again at this, and she laughed with him, their eyes,

shining with amusement, meeting in a friendly glance.

"The mill is the most important member of Crittenden's, of course. Part

of the mill-building is pre-Revolutionary, and very picturesque. In the

life-time of my husband's uncle, it still ran by water-power with a

beautiful, enormous old mossy water-wheel. But since we took it over,

we've had to put in modern machinery very prosaically and run it on its

waste of slabs, mostly. All sorts of small, unimportant objects are

manufactured there, things you never heard of probably. Backs of

hair-brushes, wooden casters to put under beds and chairs, rollers for

cotton mills. As soon as my husband returns, I'll ask him to take you

through it. That and the old church are the only historic monuments in

town."

She stopped and asked him meditatively, "What else do you suppose I need

to forestall old Mrs. Powers on? My old Cousin Hetty perhaps. She has a

last name, Allen--yes, some connection with Ethan Allen. I am, myself.

But everybody has always called her Miss Hetty till few people remember

that she has another name. She was born there in the old house below

'the Burning,' and she has lived there for eighty years, and that is all

her saga. You can't see her house from here, but it is part of

Crittenden's all the same, although it is a mile away by the main road

as you go towards the Dug-Way. But you can reach it in six or seven

minutes from here by a back lane, through the Eagle Rock woods."

"What nice names!" Mr. Welles luxuriated in them. "The Eagle Rock woods.

The Dug-Way. The Burning. Deer Hollow."

"I bet you don't know what they mean," Vincent challenged him. Vincent

was always throwing challenges, at everything. But by this time he had

learned how to dodge them. "No, I don't know, and I don't care if I

don't," he answered happily.

It pleased him that Mrs. Crittenden found this amusing, so that she

looked at him laughing. How her eyes glistened when she laughed. It made

you laugh back. He risked another small attempt at facetiousness. "Go on

with the census of Crittenden's," he told her. "I want to know all about

my future fellow-citizens. You haven't even finished up this house,

anybody but your husband."

"There is myself. You see me. There is nothing more to that. And there

are the three children, Paul, Elly, and Mark, . . ." She paused here

rather abruptly, and the whimsical accent of good-humored mockery

disappeared. For an instant her face changed into something quite

different from what they had seen. Mr. Welles could not at all make out

the expression which very passingly had flickered across her eyes with a

smoke-like vagueness and rapidity. He had the queerest fancy that she

looked somehow scared,--but of course that was preposterous.