BUT HE IS SOUGHT AFTER ALL

In Mrs. Tomkin’s garden the hydrangeas were already pink with frost, and the leaves of the maples, fallen upon the ground, covered the earth with patches of yellow and red.  By the side of the road, piles of leaves, raked together by Mr. Tomkins, were set on fire; they burned with a crackle and a roar, and gave off an odor at once pungent and regretful, which mingled in the fresh autumn air with the fragrance of grapes and cider, as the last apples of the season, too old and ripe to keep, went to the press back of the barn.

Juliet liked to play in Mrs. Tomkins’ garden, where the hens, each anxious to be not the first, but the second, ran after each other as though to say, “You go and see, and I’ll come and look.”

Now she sat on the steps of Mrs. Tomkins’ porch with her doll Sara, while her mother, Mrs. Wicket, watched at the bedside of Mrs. Grumble, who was very ill.  Juliet did not realize how ill she was; she thought Mrs. Grumble might have croup.  But Mrs. Ploughman, who sat on the porch with Mrs. Tomkins, knew that Mrs. Grumble had pneumonia.  “Got,” she explained, “by setting up that night, when Mr. Jeminy never came home.”

“No,” said Mrs. Tomkins, “he never came home.  If it had been me, in Mrs. Grumble’s place, I’d have gone to bed, instead of parading around with a lantern all night, catching my death.”

“Mr. Jeminy,” said Mrs. Ploughman, “was a queer man, and no mistake.  I remember the day he stepped in to pay me a call.  Mrs. Crabbe was with me.  ‘Mrs. Ploughman,’ he said, ’and you, Mrs. Crabbe, we’re leaving a lot of trouble behind us.’  Fancy that, Mrs. Tomkins—­as though I’d up and go any minute.  ‘Mr. Jeminy,’ I said, ’I’m not afraid to die.  When my time comes, I’ll go joyfully.’”

“No doubt you will,” said Mrs. Tomkins comfortably.

“Well,” said Mrs. Ploughman, “it’s a good thing, in my opinion, he was made to give up teaching school.  It’s a wonder the children know anything at all, Mrs. Tomkins.  I declare, it used to mix me up something terrible, just to listen to him.”

Mrs. Tomkins gazed at her sewing with thoughtful pleasure.  “It was a hard blow to him,” she said.  “He did his best.  Maybe he was a little queer.  But he harmed no one.  He used to tell the children stories.

“How is Mrs. Grumble,” she asked, “to-day?”

“Weak,” said Mrs. Ploughman; “very weak, out of her mind part of the time with the fever.”

“Do you calculate she’ll die, Mrs. Ploughman?”

“I don’t know.  But I don’t calculate she’ll live, Mrs. Tomkins.  Still, we must hope for the best.  This is the way it was; first the influenza, and then the pneumony.  Double pneumony, the doctor says.  There’s a lot of it around again, like last year.  It takes the young and the hardy.  It won’t get me.  No.

“There’s nothing to do for it,” she added, “nothing, that is, beyond nursing.”