night came, and Polly went. Lizzy went to bed with a bad headache,—convenient synonyme for aches of soul or body that one does not care to christen! Sleep she certainly did that night, for she dreamed John was married to a rich Boston girl with red hair and a yellow flannel dress, and that Polly Mariner was bridesmaid in the peculiar costume of a blue roundabout and pantaloons! But sleep with such dreams was scarcely a restorer; and Wednesday morning, when Mrs. Griswold asked Lizzy if she had put up her carpet-bag to go to Coventry, she received for answer a flood of tears, and a very earnest petition to be left at home.
"Leave you, Lizzy! Why, grandfather couldn't have Thanksgiving without you! And Uncle Boynton! And Aunt Lizzy is coming up from Stonington with the new baby;—and—John, too! You must go, Lizzy, dear!"
"I can't, mother! I can't!" said the poor girl, sobbing after every word; "please don't ask me. I can't! I've got a headache; oh, dear!" Here a fresh burst of tears followed, as Lizzy buried her head in her mother's lap.
Mrs. Griswold was both grieved and astonished; she sat speechless, stroking the soft hair that swept over her knee, till Lizzy's sobs quieted, and then said,—
"Well, dear, if you're set on staying at home, I won't oppose it, if your father thinks best; but I must ask him; only what will you do, Lizzy, here alone all night?"
"Chloe and Peter will be here, mother; and I'll make Chloe sleep in Sam's room, and leave the door open; and when they go down to Dinah's, I'll lock up, and I shan't feel afraid in broad day."
Mrs. Griswold shook her head doubtfully.
"I'll see what father says," said she. So Lizzy lifted her head, and smoothed her hair, while her mother went out to the barn to consult "father."
Here she was, if anything, more puzzled. Mr. Griswold heard the proposal with a rather misty look, as if he didn't see why, and when his wife finished, said, gravely,—
"What is it, Susan? Anybody 't has lived as long as I have knows pretty well that a woman's headache stands for a whole dictionary."
"Why, you see," said Mrs. Griswold, twisting a little lock of hay in her fingers, and faintly blushing, as if the question had been of herself rather than Lizzy, "she—well, the fact is, husband, she's kind of riled about John's not coming; you see we haven't been real particular about the children, and so"–
"You needn't spell it, Susan," said Mr. Griswold, with a half smile; "Polly Mariner's tongue helped on, I guess. You let Lizzy stay, if she wants to; 'twon't hurt her; when folks want to sulk, I generally let 'em. She can stay."
He began to whistle "Yankee Doodle" and pitch hay energetically, while "Susan" was within hearing; but how would that dear woman's soul have floundered deeper and deeper in the fog that clouded it now, had she seen her grave husband sit down on one end of the hay-mow and laugh till the tears stood in his keen eyes, and then, drawing his coat-sleeve across the shaggy lashes, say to himself, "Poor child!" and begin his work with fresh strength!
So matters were all arranged. After dinner, the rusty, dusty, old carriage appeared at the door, with the farm-horses harnessed thereto, jingling, and creaking, and snapping, as if oil and use were strange to its dry joints and stiff straps. Mrs. Griswold mounted to the back seat, after kissing Lizzy with hearty regret and tenderness,—her old gray pelisse and green winter bonnet harmonizing with the useful age of her conveyance. "Father," in a sturdy great-coat and buckskin mittens, took the reins; and Sam, whose blue jacket was at that moment crushing his mother's Sunday cap in a bandbox that sat where Lizzy should have been, clambered over the front wheel, to the great detriment of the despised butternut suit, and, seizing the whip, applied it so suddenly to Tom and Jerry that they started off down the Coventry road at a pace that threatened a solution of continuity to bones and sinews, as well as wood and leather.
Lizzy turned away sadly from the door. Who can say that just at that minute she did not wish she had gone, too? But nobody heard her say so. She went up-stairs to her room, and tried to read, but couldn't attach any ideas to the words; she was half an hour over a page of a very good book, and then flung it upon the bed with an expression of disgust, as if it were the book's fault. Poor authors! toil your fingers off, and spin your brains out! be as wise as Solomon, or witty as Sheridan! your work is vanity and vexation of spirit, unless the reader's brain choose to receive and vivify the hieroglyphs of your ideas; think yourselves successful because a great man praises you, and to-morrow that man is twisted with dyspepsia, or some woman passes him without a smile, and your sparkling sketch, your pathetic poem are declared trash! Such is fame! Of which little homily the moral is,—Write for money! What a thing it is to be worldly-wise! So was not Lizzy; if she had been, she would now be at Coventry, kissed and caressed by grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins, and–But we won't anticipate.
Lizzy flung down the book, and went to her closet for another; but it was as good (or as bad) as Bluebeard's closet, for there hung the pretty crimson merino, with delicate lace at the throat and round the short sleeves, in which Miss Lizzy Griswold once intended to electrify Mr. John Boynton this very evening. True it is that short sleeves are not the most sensible things for November; but Lizzy was twenty, and had such round, white arms, that she liked to wear short sleeves, as any girl would; and who is going to blame her? Not I! A girl doesn't know her privileges who was never just a little vain,—just a little glad to be pretty when John is by. Lizzy looked at the crimson merino, and at the smart slippers on the door with a shining black bow on each instep. There, too, on a little low table, was a green box; somebody had left it open,—mother, perhaps,—so she saw on its cotton bed a red coral bracelet, that came from Roxbury, or thereabout, last year at this time. Lizzy shut up the box, and went down-stairs to get tea.
Chloe was indignant to think "Miss 'Lisbeth" thought she couldn't get supper without help, and Miss 'Lisbeth was vexed with Chloe for being cross. And then, when supper came, the tea seemed to be very unwilling to be swallowed, and the new bread was full of large lumps that choked a person, and the lamps didn't burn clearly at all,—and—and—when Chloe, still sulky, had cleared the table, Lizzy sat down on a low cricket beside her mother's stuffed rocking-chair, and had as good a cry as ever she had in her life, and felt much better for it.
So she sat there, with her head on the arm of the chair, rather tired with the cry, rather downhearted for want of the supper she hadn't eaten, and making pictures in the fire, when all of a sudden it came into her head to wonder what they were doing at Coventry. There was grandfather, no doubt, in the keeping-room, telling his never-tiring stories of Little Robby, and Old Bose, and the Babes in the Wood; of singing the ever-new ditty of
"Did you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,"—
and so on, ad infinitum, till you got to—
"See a man eat a whale?"
to some half dozen children; while sweet Aunt Lizzy, serenely smiling, rocked the fair little baby that fifteen cousins had kissed for welcome that day; and Uncle Boynton trotted the baby's brother on his knee, inviting him persistently to go to Boston and buy a penny-cake, greatly to little Eben's aggravation, who would end, Lizzy knew, by crying for the cake, and being sent to bed. Then there were Sam, and Lucy Peters, and Jim Boynton, up to all sorts of mischief in the kitchen,—Susan Boynton and Nelly James cracking nuts and their fingers on the hearth,—father and mother up-stairs in grandmother's room; for grandmother was bedridden, but kindly, and good, and humorous, and patient, even in her hopeless bed, and nobody was dearer to the whole family than she. Then, of course, there was a fire in the best parlor, and there were all the older cousins, telling conundrums and stories, and playing grown-up games, and some two, or four, may-be, looking out in couples at the moonshine, from behind the curtains,—Sue James, perhaps, and John. Sue was so pretty!
Lizzy's head bent lower on the arm of the chair; her thoughts travelled back over a great many Thanksgivings,—years
