Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1882 — Untitled [ARTICLE]

“ Hear me,” he pleaded, catching hold of her gown. “I can’t stay out here and listen to philanderin’ talk,” she answered resolutely, and twitching her dress from his grasp she entered the house. Bnt the professor's hand was upon the latch. Like most little women, the widow was a curious mixture of timidity and courage. She flung the door opep. “ Don’t von dare to come in 1” she cried. “ I’ll throw hot water on you! HI—HI kill yon 1” Then, slamming the door in his face, she bolted it securely. All the evening the professor paced up and down Mrs. Appledore’s back veranda. The next evening he again appeared, and the next, and. the widow, tnaroaghlv alarmed, sent 1 the bravest twin out the front way with a note to her brother-in-law.

Mr. Phlox delighted in anything that oould be called proceedings, and in a few minutes he had the Deputy Sheriff and two constables, and went marching down the principal street with them, to the great delight of all the small boys of the village. It was impossible for the professor to escape. The officers crept around the house noiselessly. The Sheriff collared him, the constables pinioned his arms, Mr. Phlox grabbed him by the coat-tails, and away he was walked to the village lock-up. Mrs. Appledore passed a sleepless night: she imagined the whole, town was wide awake and discussing her, and long before daybreak she had resolved to sell her home and Dixville bank stock and move West “ I've got my comeupance,” she groaned. “I’ve always been romantic, and wanted a romance such as I’ve read about, ah’ I’ve had one. Oh, dear 1 oh, dear 1 ” About 8 o’clock in the morning there came a lively rap at the kitchen door, and, unstrung by excitement and loss of sleep, she shrieked alond. “ On’y me; on’y Deacon Bliss,” cried a pleasant voice through the keyhole. Mrs Appledore slid back the bolt with trembling fingers. “ How thankful I am,” she said, holding out her hand'; ‘*l feel so in need of somebody.” “ ’Twas fortinet I come.along jes’ as I did, then,” said the deacon, taking off his straw hat and wiping his face with his ample bandana. It was a shrewd, though benevolent face, framed in waves of iron-gray hair. “I see you look kinder peeked. The weather has been tryin’. I’ve felt it myself, and ached in my joints the wust way.” “It’s my soul, Deacon,” wailed the widow, dropping into a chair and covering her face with her apron. “I’ve always hankered after a romance, an’ I’ve had one, and I wish I was dead and laid beside Caleb.” “ Oh, no ye don’t, Miss Appledore,” said the deacon, in the caressing tone in which he would address a sobbing child. “ This world is a pooty good place, an’, with a few exceptions, folks are pooty good. I come over to fetch a few of my sweetins’, and to tell you thet that there offer I made ye a spell ago holds good yet. I rally wish ye’d consider it agin. ” Mrs. Appledore remained silent behind her apron.

“Es ye’d hev me,” repeated the deacon, in a low voice. “I know I ain’t half good ’nuff and thet I’m kind uv an old fellow, but I’ve got a comf’able El ace an’ comf’able things in it, and I’ve een sot on ye this long spell, as ye knows. I dare say I was ’tached to Lucy more’n I shall ever be to anybody agin. We sort uv growed together like, but so did you and Caleb, an’ I’m sure I’ll try ter make ye happy, and yer two little gals, as sweet as two pinks, ’ll be to me jes’ like the little gals I lost.” Mrs. Appledore did not remove her apron, and after a pause the deacon falteringly continued : “Is’pose ’tain’t no use to argy. Folks hez their own ideea of such things; but anyways I’ll stand yer friend.” The widow rubbed her eyes snd slowly let fall her apron. “ I’vs always had the greatest esteem for you,” she said, with a little shake in her voice, “but I never knew how good—how much I think of you. I will—l ” The deacon started up, “ Will ye ?” Mrs. Appledore had taken refuge in her apron. „ “Will ye really, Rosetta?” he repeated.

The bowed head covered in the blue gingham nodded. “Ye shan’t regret it,” said the deacon, solemnly and awkwardly laying his big hand, coarsened by labor, on her shoulder. “ Lord bless the little woman—an’ our home. Our home,” he spoke softly as if to himself. “ P’raps now,” he continued after a minute, “I’d better drop in an’see Asm, an’ in tailin’ the news I might mention casual like, we're goin’ ter be married soon. An’ thet nobody’ll trouble anybody that stays t’hum, "an’ that I’m able to help an eddicated man to a good place, real neighborly, ’cause my brother Eben out in Kansas wants a clerk.” Mrs. Appledore said nothing, but the deacon seemed satisfied with her silence, for he did just as he had prophesied. Prof. St. Clair Smith was discharged from jail, and in three days he and his pale little wife had left Tony Allerton’s cottage on the mile strip to return no more. In about a fortnight Dr. Ollapod attended a quiet wedding. “You’ve had a ro-mance at last, Rosetta.- I might better say two of ’em,” whispered Mrs. Phlox, as she gave the bride a sisterly kiss. “ The adoration of the professor was like things in a novel book, but marryin’ a man whose goodness an’ farm can’t be paralleled in the county is a romance that has sense in it, an’ I wish you joy.” —Elizabeth Cumings, in Our Continent.