Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1870 — AUNT NABBY DOXON. [ARTICLE]

AUNT NABBY DOXON.

BY SOmiS MAY.PHIE MAY.

A Bismarck-brown house; Mctternichgreen hop Tines ; flame colored nasturtiums ; chrome-yellow asters. It made a gay picture when the climbing rose lingered late enough to add its mite of Solferino red. It was a happy home. There was as much light and color within as without, and in the whole house only one skeleton. This was not confined to a closet; it walked abroad, wore snuffbrown dresses, a rusty black bonnet and a mud-colored veil. It was named “ Aunt Nabby," for no other reason, apparently, than that it had never owned a niece or nephew in all the day a of its life; and aa no body’s business is everybody’s every body called the skeleton Aunt Nabby. She was a very good woman in her way, but her way was not agreeable. She was as melancholy as an east wind in the fall of the year, and seemed to be always meditating upon the severe cases of sickness she had known, more particularly those she had suffered herself; for she was decidedly a cracked harp, with at least nine hundred and ninety-nine strings out of tune. Her conversation was about as entertaining as a hospital report, and sensitive people avoided her, for she seemed to drag all their diseases to light as a magnet calls up hidden pieces of steel. They said it was no wonder her husband died, for he had a latent tendency to a cough, so latent and so faint that his own mother had never observed it, but Mrs. Nabby searched it out, and fanned it to a flame till the poor man died of consumption. Children did not like her; for, in addition to the doses of rhubarb and senna which seemed to follow in her wake, there was a plain-heartedness about the good widow which gave no peace to their faults. She visited a great deal, because variety in cooking was as necessary to her health as change of air; and woe to the poor mortals who were forgetful about shutting doors, who pitched their voices too high or too low, or didn’t want to run up stairs to “ fetch her cap;’’ they never heard the last of it from Aunt Tabby. “You’re the child that screamed so loud you almost split my head open the last time I was here. I heard you had gone to your grandfather’s, or I don’t know as I’d a dared to come.” Or, “ Here is the lazy girl that can’t go up stairs for her mother’s company when they’re most laid up with rheumatism." Now it happened that Mrs. Prosser, who lived in the Hismack cottage aforesaid, had the misfortune to be second cousin to Aunt Nabby. It was Mrs. Prosser’s misfortune, not her fault; but she lmd to suffer for it just as much as if it had been a willful sin. Aunt Nabby came to live with her and “ make it her home ” in the buff and blue chamber. It was very hard for all the family, but master Paul, the oldest boy, thought the heaviest part of the burden fell on him. “She’s an Invalid of the first water,” groaned he. “To think of her pitching upon me to supply, her with medicines, and run for the doctor i” “There might be worse things,” said his gentle mother, trying to smile. “ The money she pays for her board is very useful in buying your clothes.” “I know we are poor,” returned Paul, ali ttle less savagely; “but, mother, if you had to run of errands for her, I guess you wouldn’t be quite so tender-hearted.” “ Ah! well, I know it’s a trial, Paul; but let us be patient with the poor soul. She has her peculiarities, but they are natural to her—and she is old. A leopard can’t change his spots, my son I” “No, but he can make other people change (heir spots, or Aunt Nabby can. I don’t stay in one spot long if she knows it, now you’d better believe.” Mrs. Prosser laughed and begged Paul to do his duty cheerfully, for she had no doubt good would come even of such a trial as Aunt Nabby, One evening the poor old lady appeared at the tea-table, her head tied up in a blade scarf. “ I’ve oaught an awftal cold,” said the, sneezing by way of illustration. “..No, Coasin Caro, I don’t care for any muffins or any dry toast either; and probably shall never eat another meal with the family as long as I live.” After which enlivening remark she left the table, and walked out of the room as slowly as if she were following herself to the grave. t “Walks almost as graceftilly as an inch-worm,” remarked Paul; whereupon his sister tittered, and mamma hold up a reproving finger. About ten o’clock, as Master Paul was toasting his slippered feet, preparatory to going to bed, tnere was a hoarse cry from the hqad of the stairs. “Hark!" said Paul, “ I thought at first it was the crash of broken crockery; but it isn't; it’s Aunt Nabby calling me—l decide 1 won’t go up.” But he went, of course, for Paul was the kindest boy alive. “ Bad lack I bad luck!” said he, coming down again with a wry face. “ Aunt Nabby ii dying. She wants me to go for the doctor, but I’m not going one step!” All the while he talked he was putting on his boot* and looking up his overcoat. It was a oold, still night in April, and Dr. Styles was decidedly croeser than Paul when be heard the summons to go to Aunt Nabby. T “Why, what’s the matter With her now*’’ said be, paring a Baldwin, and scowling at the quarter be held to his mouth. .“Nothing very Serious, sir, replied Paul; 11 1 believe she is only dying.”

For Aunt Nabby’s chronic habit of dying had passed into a joke. “Oh! if that is all,” said Dr. Styles, “tell her I’ll be there in the course of half an hour.” And he leisurely settled back to his newspaper again. As Paul walked home over the frozen ground, mnnehing apples as he went, he fell to thinking what a trial a nervous woman is. “If Aunt Nabby ever docs die—which isn’t at all likely—there’ll be a great many dry eyes at our house,” said he, firing an apple-core into a pasture. He would have been still more indignant if he had known that Aunt Nabby had been treating the boil on her cheek to a small blister that evening. “ For,” said she to herself, “ the doctor won’t have the least idea how sore it is unless it looks as red as a blaze.” No, Paul was vexed enough as it was, without knowing this last whimsey of Aunt Nabby’s. “ Mother is a saint; but she needn’t tell me everything is a blessing in disguise. Here am I called away from a splendid Are; presume I shall catch cold—if there’s any blessing coming out of this, I'd be pleased to see what it is.” It was a long and rather lonely road—no house for a quarter of a mile; and Paul remembered how in his little boyhood he had always whistled as he ran by the graveyard, to keep his courage up. “ I wish we didn’t live so far away from everybody. Stop! what’s that light coming through the trees? Can’t be the moon ?” No, the moon was in quite another part of the sky, daintily picking her way through drifting white clouds. “If it wasn’t the moon, what was it ? Growing larger every minute! Couldn’t be Are?” “Yes, it was, it was I Oh! where ?” Paul ran with giant strides, his heart in bis mouth, till he came to an opening in the trees,'and could see just what he had feared to see—the roof of his own home in flames. > Noi a soul In sight. No one to call on for help, and the house on fire. “Are they all abed and asleep ?” thought Paul, screaming lustily and beating upon the door with his boots. The noise aroused his father from his first nap, and his mother from the pile of stockings she was mending as she sat by Aunt Nabby’s bed. . It was not too late. A spark had crept through a crack in tho chimney and set the roof on fire, but as yet had gone no further; there was*still time to save the house. A ladder through the scuttle; all hands at work bringing water; and in half an hour the danger was past. When the doctor arrived, he found the family in a state of excitement, so grateful and happy withal that the two youngest girls were ready to kiss him as they met him in the hall. “Only think,” said Edna, “if we hadn’t sent for you, we should have burned up In our sleep. Paul came only just in time.” “So the old lady has done some good for once in her life. Thank the Lord 1” ejaculated the doctor, not without emotion. “By the way, how is she now ?" In the confusion, Aunt Nabby had not been informed that the doctor was coming, and having forgotten him entirely, she was caught refreshing herself with a hasty plate of brown bread and cheese, and a cup of strong tea. Not a very dignified death-bed scene; but the doctor had the grace not to smile. He and Paul and the whole family had their heads too frill of the mysteries of Providence to be very observant ot this humble “ instrument,” who sat groaning between her mouthfuls of tea, and looking as if she meant to die yet, if she could only get any one to attend to her. “ Things are braided together in such a queer way,” thought Paul, washing the charcoal off his hands—“in such a queer way. You can’t unbraid ’em and get the strands apart. I feel overawed somehow. I don’t know as I shall dare dispute mother again when she says we mus’nt quarrel with our trials. Sometimes they do turn into blessings, that’s a fact!”— Hearth and Home.