ART TWO

HIS SECOND WIFE

"_Heaven mend us all_"

CHAPTER VI

RECONSTRUCTION

"HOW long has it been since, Mrs. Barrows?" asked the Baptist minister.

"Eight years, Brother Bibbs," Susan answered.

They were standing in front of Susan Barrows' cottage one late June
afternoon in the summer of 1866.

The minister sighed, flapping his worn coat-tails as a signal of
distress. Mrs. Barrows was gazing at the house next door. There the
lilac bush which had showed its first blossoms on that morning of
Ambrose's runaway had grown to full estate. Its season having passed,
however, it was no longer in bloom, but instead, the climbing rose,
known in the South as the "Seven Sisters," was spreading itself above
the front door, bestowing its flowers against the background of the once
rose-coloured cottage.

Susan's black curls moved reminiscently, eight years having wrought no
changes in her beyond the deepening of the original plan. "Yes, eight
years since Ambrose Thompson brought that orphan child home, and two
since she passed away. Seems that Ambrose wouldn't never have got off
even one year to the war if she hadn't gone on before, seein' as she
wasn't never willing to let him out of her sight a minute longer'n she
could help."

"A deeply affectionate nature," remarked the minister.

"A powerful clinger," retorted Susan, "but men is forgivin' to regular
features with a high colour." She turned at this instant to look down
the street. "I call it chokin' myself to hang on to a man the way Sarah
done to Ambrose plumb up to the hour she died. What's always needin'
proppin' ain't to my mind worth the prop. Howsomever, the child is dead,
and I'm hopeful death does change us right considerable, though I can't
see as it changes nothin' of what we were nor what we done in this
world--and more's the pity!"

Assuredly Brother Bibbs was growing restless, and Mrs. Barrows talking
to cover time. For five minutes before had she not seen him attempting
to sneak past her gate to gain refuge in the Thompson cottage unobserved
before its owner could possibly have returned from work?

Then, too, the minister's face was uncommonly harassed, and these were
disjointed days in the Pennyroyal as well as throughout the entire
country. True, the Civil War was over, which Susan called "the
uncivilest ever fit on God's earth," but while its wounds and
differences were patched up they were by no means healed. And
Pennyroyal's