Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical difficulties of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old days of which Nancy Wentworth was thinking as she wiped the paint of the Peabody pew.Work in the mills did not attract him;he had no capital to invest in a stock of goods for store-keeping;school-teaching offered him only a pittance; there remained then only the farm, if he were to stay at home and keep his mother company.
"Justin don't seem to take no holt of things," said the neighbours.
"Good Heavens!" It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold of! That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble all lay in himself, and both thoughts bred weakness.
The farm had somehow supported the family in the old Deacon's time, but Justin seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil.He could, and did, rise early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them, and the elements, however much they might seem to favour his neighbours, seldom smiled on his enterprises.
The crows liked Justin's corn better than any other in Edgewood.
It had a richness peculiar to itself, a quality that appealed to the most jaded palate, so that it was really worth while to fly over a mile of intervening fields and pay it the delicate compliment of preference.
Justin could explain the attitude of caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers, and potato-bugs toward him only by assuming that he attracted them as the magnet in the toy boxes attracts the miniature fishes.
"Land of liberty! look at 'em congregate!" ejaculated Jabe Slocum, when he was called in for consultation."Now if you'd gone in for breedin' insecks, you could be as proud as Cuffy an' exhibit 'em at the County Fair! They'd give yer prizes for size an' numbers an'
speed, I guess! Why, say, they're real crowded for room--the plants ain't give 'em enough leaves to roost on! Have you tried 'Bug Death'?""It acts like a tonic on them," said Justin gloomily.
"Sho! you don't say so! Now mine can't abide the sight nor smell of it.What 'bout Paris green?""They thrive on it; it's as good as an appetizer.""Well," said Jabe Slocum, revolving the quid of tobacco in his mouth reflectively, "the bug that ain't got no objection to p'ison is a bug that's got ways o' thinkin' an' feelin' an' reasonin' that I ain't able to cope with! P'r'aps it's all a leadin' o'
Providence.Mebbe it shows you'd ought to quit farmin' crops an'
take to raisin' live stock!"
Justin did just that, as a matter of fact, a year or two later; but stock that has within itself the power of being "live" has also rare qualifications for being dead when occasion suits, and it generally did suit Justin's stock.It proved prone not only to all the general diseases that cattle-flesh is heir to, but was capable even of suicide.At least, it is true that two valuable Jersey calves, tied to stakes on the hillside, had flung themselves violently down the bank and strangled themselves with their own ropes in a manner which seemed to show that they found no pleasure in existence, at all events on the Peabody farm.
These were some of the little tragedies that had sickened young Justin Peabody with life in Edgewood, and Nancy Wentworth, even then, realized some of them and sympathized without speaking, in a girl's poor, helpless way.
Mrs.Simpson had washed the floor in the right wing of the church and Nancy had cleaned all the paint.Now she sat in the old Peabody pew darning the forlorn, faded cushion with grey carpet-thread: thread as grey as her own life.
The scrubbing-party had moved to its labours in a far corner of the church, and two of the women were beginning preparations for the basket luncheons.Nancy's needle was no busier than her memory.
Long years ago she had often sat in the Peabody pew, sometimes at first as a girl of sixteen when asked by Esther, and then, on coming home from school at eighteen, "finished," she had been invited now and again by Mrs.Peabody herself, on those Sundays when her own invalid mother had not attended service.
Those were wonderful Sundays--Sundays of quiet, trembling peace and maiden joy.