he bed. He wa'n't no relation of Calliope's if you're
as strict as some, but accordin' to my idea he was closer than
that--closer than kin. He was the grandchild of the man Calliope had
been goin' to marry forty-some years before, when she was twenty-odd.
Calvert Oldmoxon he was--born an' bred up in this very house. He was
quite well off an'--barrin' he was always heathen selfish--it was a
splendid match for Calliope, but I never see a girl care so next to
nothin' about that. She was sheer crazy about him, an' he seemed just as
much so about her. An' then when everything was ready--Calliope's dress
done an' layin' on their best-room bed, the minister stayin' home from
conference to perform the ceremony, even the white cake made--off goes
Calvert Oldmoxon with Martha Boughton, a little high-fly that had just
moved to town. A new girl can marry anything she wants in Friendship if
she does it quick. So Calliope had to put up from Martha Boughton with
just what Jennie Crapwell had to take from Delia, more'n twenty-five
years afterwards.

"It was near thirty years before we see either of 'em again. Then, just
a little before I'm tellin' you about, a strange woman come here to town
one night with a little boy; an' she goes to the hotel, sick, an' sends
for Calliope. An' when Calliope gets to the hotel the woman was about
breathin' her last. An' it was Mis' Oldmoxon--Martha Boughton, if you
please, an' dyin' on the trip she'd made to ask Calliope to forgive her
for what she done.

"An' Calliope forgive her, but I don't imagine Calliope was thinkin'
much about her at the time. Hangin' round the bed was a little boy--the
livin', breathin' image of Calvert Oldmoxon himself. Calliope was
mad-daft over children anyway, though she was always kind o' shy o'
showin' it, like a good many women are that ain't married. I've seen her
pick one up an' gentle it close to her, but let anybody besides me come
in the room an' see her an' she'd turn a regular guilt-red. Calliope
never was one to let on. But I s'pose seein' that little boy there at
the hotel look so much like _him_ was kind o' unbalancin'. So what does
she do when Mis' Oldmoxon was cryin' about forgiveness but up an' ask
her what was goin' to be done with the boy after she was dead. Calliope
would be one to bring the word 'dead' right out, too, an' let the room
ring with it--though that ain't the custom in society. Now'days they lie
everybody 'way into the grave, givin' 'em to u