Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ She had the homing instinct of every woman to whom love, or the knowledge of it, comes. Ever since she had read that old letter of her dead young lover she had longed to go home, although she had been extremely happy. She knew that she could enjoy more fully what had come to her, in all its exquisite meaning, under her own roof. Nevertheless, until the week was up she flew about Selma's house, working with vigor and full of delight. Then one afternoon she put on Selma's shawl and head-tie; Selma's rubbers were too small, and as the ice still endured she drew on a pair of old stockings. ”

“ Then Selma went, shuffling in her large rubbers, across the street. Maria watched her find the key under the blind, unlock the front door, and enter; then she drew a long breath and looked about her.
“My goodness,” said she. “I wonder if we are both plumb crazy!”
Maria actually turned around several times like a cat or a dog trying to become accustomed to strangeness. The primitive asserted itself, lifting its live head from the dust of the ages. After her turning around, Maria's face no longer looked bewildered. ”

“ Selma had told young Maria that she guessed Henry had paid quite a price for it and got cheated. Maria had always feared lest the maid of the picture might prove to be some beauty whom Henry had mysteriously met and fallen in love with. Now, as she gazed at it, she smiled pitifully at her own young folly. The photograph was only that of some actress whom Henry could never have seen at all. There was a little brass ash-tray on the bureau. Henry, young as he was, had smoked. Maria had thought that delightfully wicked. ”

“ She felt exactly as if she were that little girl. She looked at her bowl of goldfish on the stand in the south window.
“Not one of them died,” said Selma, proudly. “They are beautiful, swimming around. I guess I will have some, too.”
The largest goldfish in the bowl flashed suddenly across its liquid world, a swift grace of golden scales. “I always have liked goldfish,” said Maria. “I guess you will enjoy having some, and I can show you just how to take care of them.”
When the moon was up after supper, Selma put on her own shawl and head-tie and rubbers. Maria had brought them over. ”

“ Selma had been a beauty in her youth, although of a type unappealing to the village young men. She had been too tall and pale and still and stately for them. She had always been a very simple village woman, whose life was narrow and quite translucent, flowing over her path of fate with no ripples of concealment. When she found herself in John Hopkins's room she stood with fingers in her ears to drown out all sounds of the tragedy being enacted behind the house ”

“ Whatever the attitude of women in the wider world might be, the attitude of the women in this little village remained, however covertly, that of half a century ago. In their innermost hearts they were not, and never could be, emancipated from the old conception of the proper estate for woman. It was true that Maria's lover had died before his due time; that she had never been married to him, yet love had been hers; the dream in a man's heart had belonged to her. ”

“ That day, Selma, making her queer visit in her friend's house, had also made a discovery. When the pig-killing was in order she had fled to the remotest corner of the house, to a little bedroom which old John had occupied. It was a comfortable room, and evinced scholarly tastes on the part of the old man. Indeed, he had received a collegiate education, but had never entered a profession, preferring to work the little Hopkins farm and live an isolated life aside from the struggle of the world. A very gentle, mild man, but a man of deep thought, had been John Hopkins. ”

“ Maria's skirts whipped around her advancing knees; her shawl-ends flew out; her head-tie fluttered. Maria did not bend her head before the icy blast. She came on, setting her large rubbered feet down squarely. Maria always wore rubbers in winter, whether it was wet or dry. She opened Selma's front gate, closed it carefully, walked up the gravel path, nodded to Selma in the window, and went through another gate to the side door on the south. She left her rubbers on the door-stone, opened the door, entered, crossed Selma's large, cold kitchen, and was in the warm sitting-room. ”

“ Maria had never cared for chickens. Now she realized a certain fondness for the fluffy, pecking things. “They don't know a mite of difference betwixt me and Selma,” she thought. Then she called, “Biddy, biddy, biddy!”
When she re-entered the house, she experienced the delight of a child rummaging about Selma's pantry. She also had a double delight from the reflection that Selma was rummaging about her own. “She won't find a thing out of order, and there's plenty to eat,” she thought. She made daintily a pan of biscuits for her supper. She opened a can of peach preserve. She made tea. ”

“ Then she had watched him cross the street homeward bound, a slender, not old, as she had then thought, but middle-aged man, with a slight stoop, but a grace of motion. He had probably sought this very little room as asylum, and nobody had ever known if in that little solitude a heart had bled. ”

“ He shall be my pig.”
“He's fat enough to kill now,” said Maria. “I calculated to hire Tom Simmons to do it. It's cold enough now to keep what pig-meat I want, and I always dispose of the extra easy enough. The butcher is always tickled to death to get my sausage-meat and headcheese and pork.”
“I,” said Selma, “will do the pig work.”
“It's a big chore,” said Maria.
“You can't teach me anything about pig work. We always kept a pig. Sometimes we kept two pigs. ”

“ Of course I shall wear your petticoats, too; and I was reading the other day how short skirts were all the go. I ain't worrying about that part of it. I guess we might as well begin now. I am sick and tired of looking across at your house. Guess I'll run across the street and look at mine.”
“I know just how you feel,” said Maria. “I've felt real sort of rested since I came in here, being able to look out of the window and not see your house.”
Selma rose. “Well,” said she, “I'll put on your shawl and hood and be going. There's plenty in the house for supper. You can just hunt round and find it. ”

“ When you want more, you hang a towel out the sitting-room window, and I'll see that you have some. It all depends on how long we stay before we get tired of the change.”
“If,” said Maria, “you go into my pantry and take the cover off the old-fashioned sugar-bowl on the second shelf at the right of the door, you will find some dollar bills, and there is some change tucked in the cracked pink cup on the lower shelf behind the tea-caddy. You hang out a towel, too, if you get short. You may, with hiring the pig-killing.”
“All right,” said Selma. She tied on Maria's white worsted hood ”