ways,
and a green ribbon flyin' from her waist. That was what she came out
bride in when she married Erastus Miller. Her name before she was
married was Hill. There was always a sight of "l's" in her name,
married or single. Erastus Miller was good lookin', too, better
lookin' than Luella. Sometimes I used to think that Luella wa'n't so
handsome after all. Erastus just about worshiped her. I used to know
him pretty well. He lived next door to me, and we went to school
together. Folks used to say he was waitin' on me, but he wa'n't. I
never thought he was except once or twice when he said things that some
girls might have suspected meant somethin'. That was before Luella
came here to teach the district school. It was funny how she came to
get it, for folks said she hadn't any education, and that one of the
big girls, Lottie Henderson, used to do all the teachin' for her, while
she sat back and did embroidery work on a cambric pocket-handkerchief.
Lottie Henderson was a real smart girl, a splendid scholar, and she
just set her eyes by Luella, as all the girls did. Lottie would have
made a real smart woman, but she died when Luella had been here about a
year--just faded away and died: nobody knew what ailed her. She
dragged herself to that schoolhouse and helped Luella teach till the
very last minute. The committee all knew how Luella didn't do much of
the work herself, but they winked at it. It wa'n't long after Lottie
died that Erastus married her. I always thought he hurried it up
because she wa'n't fit to teach. One of the big boys used to help her
after Lottie died, but he hadn't much government, and the school didn't
do very well, and Luella might have had to give it up, for the
committee couldn't have shut their eyes to things much longer. The boy
that helped her was a real honest, innocent sort of fellow, and he was
a good scholar, too. Folks said he overstudied, and that was the
reason he was took crazy the year after Luella married, but I don't
know. And I don't know what made Erastus Miller go into consumption of
the blood the year after he was married: consumption wa'n't in his
family. He just grew weaker and weaker, and went almost bent double
when he tried to wait on Luella, and he spoke feeble, like an old man.
He worked terrible hard till the last trying to save up a little to
leave Luella. I've seen him out in the worst storms on a wood-sled--he
used to cut and sell wood--and he was hunch