Annie Kilburn | Page 9

or less afraid of one another in her presence, their voices
rose; they laughed loudly at nothing, and they yelled in a nervous
chorus at times, each trying to make herself heard above the others.
She asked them about the social life in the village, and they told her
that a good many new people had really settled there, but they did not
know whether she would like them; they were not the old Hatboro'
style. Annie showed them some of the things she had brought home,
especially Roman views, and they said now she ought to give an
evening in the church parlour with them.
"You'll have to come to our church, Annie," said Mrs. Putney. "The
Unitarian doesn't have preaching once in a month, and Mr. Peck is very
liberal."
"He's 'most too liberal for some," said Emmeline Gerrish. Of the three
she had grown the stoutest, and from being a slight, light-minded girl,
she had become a heavy matron, habitually censorious in her speech.
She did not mean any more by it, however, than she did by her girlish
frivolity, and if she was not supported in her severity, she was apt to
break down and disown it with a giggle, as she now did.
"Well, I don't know about his being too liberal," said Mrs. Wilmington,
a large red-haired blonde, with a lazy laugh. "He makes you feel that
you're a pretty miserable sinner." She made a grimace of humorous
disgust.
"Mr. Gerrish says that's just the trouble," Mrs. Gerrish broke in. "Mr.
Peck don't put stress enough on the promises. That's what Mr. Gerrish
says. You must have been surprised, Annie," she added, "to find that
he'd been staying in your house."
"I was glad Mrs. Bolton invited him," answered Annie sincerely, but
not instantly.

The ladies waited, with an exchange of glances, for her reply, as if they
had talked the matter over beforehand, and had agreed to find out just
how Annie Kilburn felt about it.
"Oh, I guess he paid his board," said Mrs. Wilmington, jocosely
rejecting the implication that he had been the guest of the Boltons.
"I don't see what he expects to do with that little girl of his, without any
mother, that way," said Mrs. Gerrish. "He ought to get married."
"Perhaps he will, when he's waited a proper time," suggested Mrs.
Putney demurely.
"Well, his wife's been the same as dead ever since the child was born. I
don't know what you call a proper time, Ellen," argued Mrs. Gerrish.
"I presume a minister feels differently about such things," Mrs.
Wilmington remarked indolently.
"I don't see why a minister should feel any different from anybody
else," said Mrs. Gerrish. "It's his duty to do it on his child's account. I
don't see why he don't have the remains brought to Hatboro', anyway."
They debated this point at some length, and they seemed to forget
Annie. She listened with more interest than her concern in the last
resting-place of the minister's dead wife really inspired. These old
friends of hers seemed to have lost the sensitiveness of their girlhood
without having gained tenderness in its place. They treated the affair
with a nakedness that shocked her. In the country and in small towns
people come face to face with life, especially women. It means
marrying, child-bearing, household cares and burdens, neighbourhood
gossip, sickness, death, burial, and whether the corpse appeared natural.
But ever so much kindness goes with their disillusion; they are blunted,
but not embittered.
They ended by recalling Annie to mind, and Mrs. Putney said: "I
suppose you haven't been to the cemetery yet? I They've got it all fixed
up since you went away--drives laid out, and paths cut through, and

everything. A good many have put up family tombs, and they've taken
away the old iron fences round the lots, and put granite curbing. They
mow the grass all the time. It's a perfect garden." Mrs. Putney was a
small woman, already beginning to wrinkle. She had married a man
whom Annie remembered as a mischievous little boy, with a sharp
tongue and a nervous temperament; her father had always liked him
when he came about the house, but Annie had lost sight of him in the
years that make small boys and girls large ones, and he was at college
when she went abroad. She had an impression of something unhappy in
her friend's marriage.
"I think it's too much fixed up myself," said Mrs. Gerrish. She turned
suddenly to Annie: "You going to have your father fetched home?"
The other ladies started a little at the question and looked at Annie; it
was not that they were shocked, but they wanted to see whether she
would not be so.
"No," she said briefly. She