Of course the Widow Stimson never tried
to win Deacon Hawkins, nor any other man, for that matter. A widow doesn't have
to try to win a man; she wins without trying.
This interesting situation was up for
discussion at the Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Sisters' Sewing Society.
"For my part," Sister Susan
Spicer, wife of the Methodist minister, remarked as she took another tuck in a
fourteen-year-old girl's skirt for a ten-year-old—"for my part, I can't
see why Deacon Hawkins and Kate Stimson don't see the error of their ways and
depart from them."
"I rather guess she
has," smiled Sister Poteet, the grocer's better half, who had taken an
afternoon off from the store in order to be present.
"Or is willing to," added
Sister Maria Cartridge, a spinster still possessing faith, hope, and charity,
notwithstanding she had been on the waiting list a long time.
"Really, now," exclaimed little
Sister Green, the doctor's wife, "do you think it is the deacon who needs
urging?"
"It looks that way to me,"
Sister Poteet did not hesitate to affirm.
"Well, I heard Sister Clark say that
she had heard him call her
'Kitty' one night when they were eating ice-cream at the Mite
Society," Sister Candish, the druggist's wife, added to the fund of
reliable information on hand.
'Kitty' one night when they were eating ice-cream at the Mite
Society," Sister Candish, the druggist's wife, added to the fund of
reliable information on hand.
"'Kitty,' indeed!" protested
Sister Spicer. "The idea of anybody calling Kate Stimson 'Kitty'! The
deacon will talk that way to 'most any woman, but if she let him say it to her
more than once, she must be getting mighty anxious, I think."
"Oh," Sister Candish hastened
to explain, "Sister Clark didn't say she had heard him say it
twice.'"
"Well, I don't think she heard him say
it once," Sister Spicer asserted with confidence.
"I don't know about that,"
Sister Poteet argued. "From all I can see and hear I think Kate Stimson
wouldn't object to 'most anything the deacon would say to her, knowing as she
does that he ain't going to say anything he shouldn't say."
"And isn't saying what he
should," added Sister Green, with a sly snicker, which went around the
room softly.
"But as I was saying—" Sister
Spicer began, when Sister Poteet, whose rocker, near the window, commanded a
view of the front gate, interrupted with a warning, "'Sh-'sh."
"Why shouldn't I say what I wanted
to when—" Sister Spicer began.
"There she comes now,"
explained Sister Poteet, "and as I live the deacon drove her here in his
sleigh, and he's waiting while she comes in. I wonder what next," and
Sister Poteet, in conjunction with the entire society, gasped and held their
eager breaths, awaiting the entrance of the subject of conversation.
Sister Spicer went to the front door to
let her in, and she was greeted with the greatest cordiality by everybody.
"We were just talking about you and
wondering why you were so late coming," cried Sister Poteet. "Now
take off your things and make up for lost time. There's a pair of pants over
there to be cut down to fit that poor little Snithers boy."
The excitement and curiosity of the
society were almost more than could be borne, but never a sister let on that
she knew the deacon was at the gate waiting. Indeed, as far as the widow could
discover, there was not the slightest indication that anybody had ever heard
there was such a person as the deacon in existence.
"Oh," she chirruped, in the
liveliest of humors, "you will have to excuse me for today. Deacon Hawkins
overtook me on the way here, and here said I had simply got to go sleigh-riding
with him. He's waiting out at the gate now."
"Is that so?" exclaimed the
society unanimously, and rushed to the window to see if it were really true.
"Well, did you ever?" commented
Sister Poteet, generally.
"Hardly ever," laughed the
widow, good-naturedly, "and I don't want to lose the chance. You know
Deacon Hawkins isn't asking somebody every day to go sleighing with him. I told
him I'd go if he would bring me around here to let you know what had become of
me, and so he did. Now, good-by, and I'll be sure to be present at the next
meeting. I have to hurry because he'll get fidgety."
The widow ran away like a lively
schoolgirl. All the sisters watched her get into the sleigh with the deacon,
and resumed the previous discussion with greatly increased interest.
But little recked the widow and less
recked the deacon. He had bought a new horse and he wanted the widow's opinion
of it, for the Widow Stimson was a competent judge of fine horseflesh. If
Deacon Hawkins had one insatiable ambition it was to own a horse which could
fling its heels in the face of the best that Squire Hopkins drove. In his early
manhood the deacon was no deacon by a great deal. But as the years gathered in
behind him he put off most of the frivolities of youth and held now only to the
one of driving a fast horse. No other man in the county drove anything faster
except Squire Hopkins, and him the deacon had not been able to throw the dust
over. The deacon would get good ones, but somehow never could he find one that
the squire didn't get a better. The squire had also in the early days beaten
the deacon in the race for a certain pretty girl he dreamed about. But the girl
and the squire had lived happily ever after and the deacon, being a
philosopher, might have forgotten the squire's superiority had it been
manifested in this one regard only. But in horses, too—that graveled the
deacon.
"How much did you give for
him?" was the widow's first query, after they had reached a stretch of
road that was good going and the deacon had let him out for a length or two.
"Well, what do you suppose? You're a
judge."
"More than I would give, I'll bet a
cookie."
"Not if you was as anxious as I am
to show Hopkins
"I thought you loved a good horse because
he was a good horse," said the widow, rather disapprovingly.
"I do, but I could love him a good
deal harder if he would stay in front of Hopkins
"Does he know you've got this
one?"
"Yes, and he's been blowing round
town that he is waiting to pick me up on the road some day and make my five
hundred dollars look like a pewter quarter."
"So you gave five hundred dollars
for him, did you?" laughed the widow.
"Is it too much?"
"Um-er," hesitated the widow,
glancing along the graceful lines of the powerful trotter, "I suppose not
if you can beat the squire."
"Right you are," crowed the
deacon, "and I'll show him a thing or two in getting over the
ground," he added with swelling pride.
"Well, I hope he won't be out
looking for you today, with me in your sleigh," said the widow, almost
apprehensively, "because, you know, deacon, I have always wanted you to
beat Squire Hopkins."
The deacon looked at her sharply. There
was a softness in her tones that appealed to him, even if she had not expressed
such agreeable sentiments. Just what the deacon might have said or done after
the impulse had been set going must remain unknown, for at the crucial moment a
sound of militant bells, bells of defiance, jangled up behind them, disturbing
their personal absorption, and they looked around simultaneously. Behind the
bells was the squire in his sleigh drawn by his fastest stepper, and he was
alone, as the deacon was not. The widow weighed one hundred and sixty pounds,
net—which is weighting a horse in a race rather more than the law allows.
But the deacon never thought of that.
Forgetting everything except his cherished ambition, he braced himself for the
contest, took a twist hold on the lines, sent a sharp, quick call to his horse,
and let him out for all that was in him. The squire followed suit and the
deacon. The road was wide and the snow was worn down smooth. The track couldn't
have been in better condition. The Hopkins
Not handicapped, the squire's horse
forged ahead, and as his nose pushed up to the dashboard of the deacon's
sleigh, that good man groaned in agonized disappointment and bitterness of
spirit. The widow was mad all over that Squire Hopkins should take such a mean
advantage of his rival. Why didn't he wait till another time when the deacon
was alone, as he was? If she had her way she never would, speak to Squire
Hopkins again, nor to his wife, either. But her resentment was not helping the
deacon's horse to win.
Slowly the squire pulled closer to the
front; the deacon's horse, realizing what it meant to his master and to him,
spurted bravely, but, struggle as gamely as he might, the odds were too many
for him, and he dropped to the rear. The squire shouted in triumph as he drew
past the deacon, and the dejected Hawkins shrivelled into a heap on the seat,
with only his hands sufficiently alive to hold the lines. He had been beaten
again, humiliated before a woman, and that, too, with the best horse that he
could hope to put against the ever-conquering squire. Here sank his fondest
hopes, here ended his ambition. From this on he would drive a mule or an
automobile. The fruit of his desire had turned to ashes in his mouth.
But no. What of the widow? She realized,
if the deacon did not, that she, not the squire's horse, had beaten the
deacon's, and she was ready to make what atonement she could. As the squire
passed ahead of the deacon she was stirred by a noble resolve. A deep bed of
drifted snow lay close by the side of the road not far in front. It was soft
and safe and she smiled as she looked at it as though waiting for her. Without
a hint of her purpose, or a sign to disturb the deacon in his final throes, she
rose as the sleigh ran near its edge, and with a spring which had many a time
sent her lightly from the ground to the bare back of a horse in the meadow, she
cleared the robes and lit plump in the drift. The deacon's horse knew before
the deacon did that something had happened in his favor, and was quick to
respond. With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes
came fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered himself, and, cracking his
lines, he shot forward, and three minutes later he had passed the squire as
though he were hitched to the fence. For a quarter of a mile the squire made
heroic efforts to recover his vanished prestige, but effort was useless, and
finally concluding that he was practically left standing, he veered off from
the main road down a farm lane to find some spot in which to hide the
humiliation of his defeat. The deacon, still going at a clipping gait, had one
eye over his shoulder as wary drivers always have on such occasions, and when
he saw the squire was off the track he slowed down and jogged along with the
apparent intention of continuing indefinitely. Presently an idea struck him,
and he looked around for the widow. She was not where he had seen her last.
Where was she? In the enthusiasm of victory he had forgotten her. He was so
dejected at the moment she had leaped that he did not realize what she had
done, and two minutes later he was so elated that, shame on him! he did not
care. With her, all was lost; without her, all was won, and the deacon's
greatest ambition was to win. But now, with victory perched on his
horse-collar, success his at last, he thought of the widow, and he did care. He
cared so much that he almost threw his horse off his feet by the abrupt turn he
gave him, and back down the pike he flew as if a legion of squires were after
him.
He did not know what injury she might
have sustained; She might have been seriously hurt, if not actually killed. And
why? Simply to make it possible for him to win. The deacon shivered as he
thought of it, and urged his horse to greater speed. The squire, down the lane,
saw him whizzing along and accepted it profanely as an exhibition for his
especial benefit. The deacon now had forgotten the squire as he had only so
shortly before forgotten the widow. Two hundred yards from the drift into which
she had jumped there was a turn in the road, where some trees shut off the
sight, and the deacon's anxiety increased momentarily until he reached this
point. From here he could see ahead, and down there in the middle of the road stood
the widow waving her shawl as a banner of triumph, though she could only guess
at results. The deacon came on with a rush, and pulled up alongside of her in a
condition of nervousness he didn't think possible to him.
"Hooray! hooray!" shouted the
widow, tossing her shawl into the air. "You beat him. I know you did.
Didn't you? I saw you pulling ahead at the turn yonder. Where is he and his old
plug?"
"Oh, bother take him and his horse
and the race and everything. Are you hurt?" gasped the deacon, jumping
out, but mindful to keep the lines in his hand. "Are you hurt?" he
repeated, anxiously, though she looked anything but a hurt woman.
"If I am," she chirped,
cheerily, "I'm not hurt half as bad as I would have been if the squire had
beat you, deacon. Now don't you worry about me. Let's hurry back to town so the
squire won't get another chance, with no place for me to jump."
And the deacon? Well, well, with the
lines in the crook of his elbow the deacon held out his arms to the widow
and——. The sisters at the next meeting of the Sewing Society were unanimously
of the opinion that any woman who would risk her life like that for a husband
was mighty anxious.
