Annie Kilburn

-bred woman. She delivered her judgments as she went about her work, the morning after the ladies' visit, while Annie sat before the breakfast-table, which she had given her l

thered up into a small knob pierced with a single hair-pin; the arrangement left Mrs. Bolton's visage to the unrestricted expression of character. She did not let it express toward Annie any expectation of the confidential relations that are supposed to exist between people who have been a long time master and servant. She had never recognised her relations w

m. She turned away, with a sigh of the luxurious melancholy which a northeaster inspires in people safely sheltered from it, and sat down before her fire. She recalled the three women who had visited her the day before, in the better-remembered figures of their childhood and young girlhood; and their present character did not seem a broken promise. Nothing was really disappointed in it but the animal joy, the hopeful riot of their young blood, which must fade and die with the happiest fate. She perceived that what they had come to was not unjust to what they had been; and as our own fate always appears to us unaccomplished, a thing for the distant future to fulfil, she began to ask herself what was to be the natural

lised her; they had not seen her since she was twenty, and perhaps they still thought of her as a young girl. It now seemed to her as if she had left her youth in Rome, as in Rome it had seemed to her that she should find it again in Hatboro'. A pang of aimless, unlocalised homesickness passed through her; she realised that she was alone in the world. She rose to escape the pang, and went to the window of the parlour which looked toward the street, where she saw the figure of a young man draped in a long indiarubber gossamer coat fluttering in the wind that pushed him along as he tacked on a southerly course; he bowed and twisted his head to escape the lash of the rain. She watched him till

come in her father's time, but when she opened to him he took off his hat with a great deal of manner, and said "Mi

nfusion, while the flash

e than twenty-two or twenty-three; his damp hair waved and curled upon his temples and forehead, and his blue eyes li

answered, "Yes?" She did not want his books, but she liked something that was

the pan of the hat rack. He gathered up his books from the chair where he had laid them, an

pologise for coming on a day like this, whe

But you must have had courage

ry anxious to see you about a matter I ha

me as a subscriber to his book"-there seemed really to be a

, but you'll like her; she's the leading spirit in South Hatboro'-and we were coming together

said. "Then Mrs. Munger has subscribed already, a

etotum, of the South Hatboro' ladies' book club, and I've be

how much she had let her manner betray that she had supposed h

e last," he said; and Annie had time to get into a new social attitude toward him during their discussion

is that she is so heart and soul with me in my little scheme. She could have put it

serious cause

Her son is one of the Freshman N

said

t many English people in Rome, and heard some of them talk about it. We're thinking, some of the young people here, about getting up

e been very-original. But do you think that in a community li

You've no idea what a place Hatboro' has got to b

ve seen nobody but two or three old friends, and we naturally talked more a

s to Hatboro'. My mother couldn't have lived, if she had tried to stay in Melrose. One lung all gone, and the other seriously affected. And people have found out what a charming place it is for the summer. It's cool; and it's so near, you know; the gentlemen can run out every night-only an hour and a quarter from town, and expresses both ways. All very agreeable people, too; and cultivated. Mr. Fello

ad no idea of

in it, and make it a whole-town affair. I think it's a great pity for some of the old village families and the summer folks, as they call us, not to mingle more than they do, and Mrs.

mer folks nor old villag

both," retorte

in theatricals, in-doors or out? I never took part in anything of the kind; I can't see an inch beyond the end of

to take part in the play. I don't admit that you're what you

xpect to do with my countenance?" A

; and we do want to interest the whole community in our scheme. We want to establish a Social Union for the work-p

on to the vague intentions with which she had returned to Hatboro'; it might a

gan. "If I knew just w

l lighted and heated, where the work-people-those who have no families especially-could spend their evenings. Afterward we s

atricals to do-But of course. Y

ve our time and money to getting the thing up in the best shape, and then we wa

," sai

nt to make it unique. Mrs. Munger is going to give her grounds and the

e, with a smile, from the vantage-ground of her larg

ard to do. The ballroom in the house of the Capulets could be made to open on a kind of garden terrace-Mrs. Munger has a lovely terrace in her grounds for lawn-tennis-and th

sn't a minuet at Verona in the

ou know, we could have the whole of the balcony scene, and other bits that

ng; I can see how very c

count upon yo

"but I don't really

wn again, as if glad to afford her any

say?" she continued. "I'm quite a stra

the history of the place, and you could do everything for us. You won't refu

an old girl-f

ngton round. If we could get them committed to the scheme, and a man like Mr. Putney-he'd make a capital Mercutio-it would go like wildfire. We want to interest the churches, too. The object is so worthy, and the theatricals will be so entirely unobjectionable in ev

d Annie. "He boarded with the f

jectionable. You see, the design is to let everybody come to the theatricals, and only those remain to the supper and d

isn't the-the Social Un

dings-for the winter, and keep them interested the whole year round in it. The object is to show them that

"the object is ce

, and put out his hand.

t know abou

you won't

ainly

ilburn, and I feel that I can safely leave you to Mrs. M

t Rome? She had felt, as every American of conscience feels abroad, the drawings of a duty, obscure and indefinable, toward her country, the duty to come home and do something for it, be something i

she shrank from a more thorough exploration of the place. She found she had fancied necessity coming to her and taking away her good works, as it were, in a basket; but till Mr. Brandreth appeared with his scheme, nothing had applied for her help. She had always hated theatricals; they bored her; and yet the Social Union was a good object, and if this scheme would bring her acq

n the gable. Annie fell off to sleep. When she woke up she heard Mrs. Bolton laying the table for her one o'clock dinner, and she knew

Bolton had her criterions, and she believed in them firmly; in a time when agnosticism extends among cultivated people to every region of conjecture, the social convictions of Mrs. Bolton were untainted by misgiving. In the first place, she despised laziness, and as South Hatboro' was the summer home of open and avowed disoccupation, of an idleness so

scandal to the elder village. When Annie came to find out what these were, she did not think them dreadful; they were small flirtations and harmless intimacies between the members of the summer co

t know what they want to rest from; but if it's from doin' nothin' all win

rs and the heavy suppers of evening receptions; the drain of charity-doing and play-going; the slavery of amateur art study, and parlour readings, and musicales; the writing of invitations and acceptances and refusals; the trying on of dresses; the cal

r I oughtn't to do something about Mr. Peck. I don't want him to feel that he was unwelco

on, after the fashion of country peop

ever come

re last night,"

ie. "Why in the world d

th a sullen defiance mixed with pleasure in Annie's reproach

here it would look to him as if I didn't wish to meet him

said she did not suppose he would take it in that way; she added that he stayed longer than she ex

's attached to the pl

" Mrs. Bolton admit

w Mrs. Bolton would not stand that, and she had to content herself with saying, severely, "T

the mother, if anything. It do

en, then," asked Annie, "if it'

wanted to have it round," r

nce with her obtuseness, and as

at Mis' Warner's til

far fro

rth part of the vill

Bolton a

olton, with the effect of

er here to dinner with me." Annie got so far with her severity, feeling that it was need

on, but in ten or twelve minutes she saw him emerge from the avenue into the street, in the carry-all, tightly curtained against the storm. Half an hour later he returned, and his wife set down in the library a shabbily dress

went out after bringing in the last dish for dinner, and then fastened her eyes on Annie again, twisting her head shyly round to follow her in every gesture and expression as Annie fitted on a napkin under her chin, cut up her meat, poured her milk, and buttered her bread. She answered nothing to the chatter which Annie tried to make lively and entertaining, and made no sound but that of a broken and suppressed breathing. Annie had forgotten to ask her name of Mrs. Bolton, and she asked it in vain of the child herself, with a great variety of circum

instant perception of the situation, caught the child to her bony breast, and fled with it to her own roo

with Mrs. Bolton, whose flight with it had somehow implied a reproach of her behaviour. When she could govern herself, she went out to Mrs. Bolton's

ritical tone which Annie was prepared to resent. "She w

essing up the cat, I suppose," answered

ng. I don't believe they like anything that'

se herself more and more, and then an unresponsive blankness that silenced her. She w

and from finding that she had really a good deal to say, she let it grow so that she began apologising for its length half a dozen pages