Mrs. Hartlett was a widow, her husband having died eighty-one years before.
“Just think of it, Philip,” said Ethel, as we began to descend the little hill at the foot of which Mrs. Hartlett lived with a granddaughter, a woman verging on sixty years, and almost as old looking as her grandmother.
“Just think of it; for the best part of her life Mrs. Hartlett has had a young husband.”
“What do you mean?” said I, not at once seeing her drift.
“Why, the memory of her husband is that of a young man. They said he was only twenty-two when he died, and for over eighty years she has had that picture in her memory.”
“It’s probably kept _her_ young,” said I.
We found her sitting outside of her door under a grape arbour, knitting. Her face was thin and her cheek bones high and the skin was drawn tightly, but its colour had a reminiscence of the rosy shade that had (so tradition said) made her a beauty “in the days when Madison was president.”
She was erect, and despite a slight trembling of her frame, she looked strong.
“We thought we’d come and see you and bring you some sweet peas,” said Ethel.
“It is very good of you,” said she, in a voice which though cracked had a pleasant ring of sincerity in it. “You are the Vernons, are you not?”
I was surprised that so old a soul should be enough interested in things to know who transient summer people were, but I suppose it was that very interest in things that had kept her faculties unimpaired.
As I looked at her I felt proud of New England. Perfectly self-possessed, abundantly able to hold her own in conversation, respected by all and self-respecting, she was a type of that native cultivation that made the hill towns a source of strength to the nation, before the coming of steam cars that drew the young men and maidens from the hills and sent them forth to carry New England traditions to the West.
“Oh, yes, the young people come in and keep me informed of all passing matters,” said she, talking slowly and evidently choosing her words with care.
“Pray be seated,” said she quaintly, and we took seats under the pleasant grape arbour.
Suddenly a canary, whose cage hung in the centre of the arbour, burst into a roulade that had something of the bubbling ecstacy of a bobolink’s note.