Annie Kilburn | Page 8

him in a table from her own sitting-room to write at. The
Judge's desk was untouched, and his heavy wooden arm-chair stood
pulled up to it as if he were in it. The ranks of law-books, in their
yellow sheepskin, with their red titles above and their black titles below,
were in the order he had taught Mrs. Bolton to replace them in after
dusting; the stuffed owl on a shelf above the mantel looked down with
a clear solemnity in its gum-copal eyes, and Mrs. Bolton took it from
its perch to show Miss Kilburn that there was not a moth on it, nor the
sign of a moth.
Miss Kilburn experienced here that refusal of the old associations to
take the form of welcome which she had already felt in the earth and
sky and air outside; in everything there was a sense of impassable
separation. Her dead father was no nearer in his wonted place than the
trees of the orchard, or the outline of the well-known hills, or the pink
of the familiar sunsets. In her rummaging about the house she pulled
open a chest of drawers which used to stand in the room where she
slept when a child. It was full of her own childish clothing, a little girl's
linen and muslin; and she thought with a throe of despair that she could
as well hope to get hack into these outgrown garments, which the
helpless piety of Mrs. Bolton had kept from the rag-bag, as to think of
re-entering the relations of the life so long left off.
It surprised her to find how cold the Boltons were; she had remembered
them as always very kind and willing; but she was so used now to the
ways of the Italians and their showy affection, it was hard for her to
realise that people could be both kind and cold. The Boltons seemed
ashamed of their feelings, and hid them; it was the same in some degree
with all the villagers when she began to meet them, and the fact slowly

worked back into her consciousness, wounding its way in. People did
not come to see her at once. They waited, as they told her, till she got
settled, before they called, and then they did not appear very glad to
have her back.
But this was not altogether the effect of their temperament. The
Kilburns had made a long summer always in Hatboro', and they had
always talked of it as home; but they had never passed a whole year
there since Judge Kilburn first went to Congress, and they were not
regarded as full neighbours or permanent citizens. Miss Kilburn,
however, kept up her childhood friendships, and she and some of the
ladies called one another by their Christian names, but they believed
that she met people in Washington whom she liked better; the winters
she spent there certainly weakened the ties between them, and when it
came to those eleven years in Rome, the letters they exchanged grew
rarer and rarer, till they stopped altogether. Some of the girls went
away; some died; others became dead and absent to her in their
marriages and household cares.
After waiting for one another, three of them came together to see her
one day. They all kissed her, after a questioning glance at her face and
dress, as if they wanted to see whether she had grown proud or too
fashionable. But they were themselves apparently much better dressed,
and certainly more richly dressed. In a place like Hatboro', where there
is no dinner-giving, and evening parties are few, the best dress is a
street costume, which may be worn for calls and shopping, and for
church and all public entertainments. The well-to-do ladies make an
effect of outdoor fashion, in which the poorest shop hand has her part;
and in their turn they share her indoor simplicity. These old friends of
Annie's wore bonnets and frocks of the latest style and costly material.
They let her make the advances, receiving them with blank passivity, or
repelling them with irony, according to the several needs of their
self-respect, and talking to one another across her. One of them asked
her when her hair had begun to turn, and they each told her how thin
she was, but promised her that Hatboro' air would bring her up. At the
same time they feigned humility in regard to everything about Hatboro'

but the air; they laughed when she said she intended now to make it her
home the whole year round, and said they guessed she would be tired
of it long before fall; there were plenty of summer folks that passed the
winter as long as the June weather lasted. As they grew more secure of
themselves,