Samantha Ann Ripley had had her heart history too,--one of a different
kind. She had "kept company" with David Milliken for a little matter of
twenty years, off and on, and Miss Avilda had expected at various times
to lose her friend and helpmate; but fear of this calamity had at length
been quite put to rest by the fourth and final rupture of the bond, five
years before.
There had always been a family feud between the Ripleys and the
Millikens; and when the young people took it into their heads to fall in
love with each other in spite of precedent or prejudice, they found that
the course of true love ran in anything but a smooth channel. It was, in
fact, a sort of village Montague and Capulet affair; but David and
Samantha were no Romeo and Juliet. The climate and general conditions of
life at Pleasant River were not favorable to the development of such
exotics. The old people interposed barriers between the young ones as
long as they lived; and when they died, Dave Milliken's spirit was
broken, and he began to annoy the valiant Samantha by what she called
his "meechin'" ways. In one of his moments of weakness he took a widowed
sister to live with him, a certain Mrs. Pettigrove, of Edgewood, who
inherited the Milliken objection to Ripleys, and who widened the breach
and brought Samantha to the point of final and decisive rupture. The
last straw was the statement, sown broadcast by Mrs. Pettigrove, that
"Samanthy Ann Ripley's father never would 'a' died if he'd ever had any
doctorin'; but 't was the gospel truth that they never had nobody to
'tend him but a hom'pathy man from Scratch Corner, who, of course, bein'
a hom'path, didn't know no more about doctorin' 'n Cooper's cow.
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