298 * BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jbii., 



The following paper, by Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke, was read 

 by the Secretary : 



THE TWO MRS. TUCKERS. 



« 



By Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke. 



"You can make the fire while I put the lioss out," said Amasa 

 Tucker, as he opened the back door of a gray house, set on top of 

 a treeless hill, tracked here and there with the paths the geese had 

 made in their daily journeys to the pond below, and only approached 

 at the back by a lane to the great red barn, and a rickety board 

 gate set between two posts of the rail fence. 



This was Wealthy Ann Tucker's home-coming. She had mar- 

 ried Amasa that morning at her father's house in Stanton, a little 

 village twenty miles away from Feet's Mills, the town within whose 

 wide limits lay the Tucker farm; and had come home with him this 

 early spring-afternoon in the old wagon, behind the bony horse 

 that did duty for Amasa's family carriage. 



Mrs. Tucker was a tall, thin, young woman, with a sad reticent 

 face, very silent and capable; these last traits had been her chief 

 recommendation to her husband. There was no sentiment about 

 the matter. Old Mrs. Tucker had died two weeks before this 

 marriage, but Amasa was " forehanded," and knowing his mother 

 could not live long, had improved his opportunities and been 

 "sparkin"' Wealthy Ann Miner all winter, in judicious provision 

 for the coming event of his solitude. 



He had thought the thing all over, and concluded that a wife 

 was cheaper than a hired girl, and more permanent ; so when he 

 found this alert, firm-jointed, handy girl living at her uncle's, 

 who was a widower on a great farm on the other side of the vil- 

 lage, Amasa made her acquaintance as soon as possible, and pro- 

 ceeded to further intimacy. Wealthy liked better to work for her 

 uncle than for a step-father with six children, but she thought it 

 would be better still to have a house of her own ; so she agreed to 

 marry Amasa Tucker, and this was her home-comi'ng. 



She opened the door into a dingy room with an open fire-place 

 at one end, a window on the north and one on the south side, small, 

 paned with old, green, and imperfect glass, and letting in but just 

 enough light to work by. One corner, to the north, was parti- 

 tioned off to make a pantry, and a door by the fire-place_ led out 



