Quite soon, she asked to be excused
For just a moment, and
Went out, returning with a tray
In either slender hand.
My glance could not but linger on
Each thin and lovely cup;
"This came, dear thing, from home!" she
sighed
The while she raised it up.
And when the storm was done and I
Arose, reluctantly
To go, she too was loath to have
Me go, it seemed to me.
When I reached old Joe Webber's place,
Upon the Corner Road,
I went into the Upper Field
Where Joe, round-shouldered, hoed
Potatoes, culling them with hoe
And practised, calloused hand,
In rounded piles that brownly glowed
Upon the fresh-turned land.
"Say, Joe," I said, "who is that girl
With beauty's smiling charm,
That lives beyond that hemlock growth,
On that old grown-up farm?"
Joe listened, while I told him where
I'd been that afternoon,
Then straightened from his hoe, and hummed,
Before he spoke, a tune
"They cum ter thet old place ter live
Some sixty years ago;
Jest where they cum from, who they ware,
Wy, no one got to know.
"An' then, one day, he hired Hen's
Red racker an' the gig;
We never heard from him nor could
We track the hoss or rig.
"Hen waited 'bout a week, an' then
He went ter see the Wife;
He found her in thet settin' room:
She'd taken of her life.
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