Summer | Page 7

and she slipped into bed, cold to the bone.
A day or two later poor Eudora Skeff, who for twenty years had been
the custodian of the Hatchard library, died suddenly of pneumonia; and
the day after the funeral Charity went to see Miss Hatchard, and asked
to be appointed librarian. The request seemed to surprise Miss Hatchard:
she evidently questioned the new candidate's qualifications.
"Why, I don't know, my dear. Aren't you rather too young?" she
hesitated.
"I want to earn some money," Charity merely answered.
"Doesn't Mr. Royall give you all you require? No one is rich in North
Dormer."
"I want to earn money enough to get away."
"To get away?" Miss Hatchard's puzzled wrinkles deepened, and there
was a distressful pause. "You want to leave Mr. Royall?"
"Yes: or I want another woman in the house with me," said Charity
resolutely.
Miss Hatchard clasped her nervous hands about the arms of her chair.
Her eyes invoked the faded countenances on the wall, and after a faint
cough of indecision she brought out: "The... the housework's too hard
for you, I suppose?"
Charity's heart grew cold. She understood that Miss Hatchard had no
help to give her and that she would have to fight her way out of her
difficulty alone. A deeper sense of isolation overcame her; she felt
incalculably old. "She's got to be talked to like a baby," she thought,
with a feeling of compassion for Miss Hatchard's long immaturity.

"Yes, that's it," she said aloud. "The housework's too hard for me: I've
been coughing a good deal this fall."
She noted the immediate effect of this suggestion. Miss Hatchard paled
at the memory of poor Eudora's taking-off, and promised to do what
she could. But of course there were people she must consult: the
clergyman, the selectmen of North Dormer, and a distant Hatchard
relative at Springfield. "If you'd only gone to school!" she sighed. She
followed Charity to the door, and there, in the security of the threshold,
said with a glance of evasive appeal: "I know Mr. Royall is... trying at
times; but his wife bore with him; and you must always remember,
Charity, that it was Mr. Royall who brought you down from the
Mountain." Charity went home and opened the door of Mr. Royall's
"office." He was sitting there by the stove reading Daniel Webster's
speeches. They had met at meals during the five days that had elapsed
since he had come to her door, and she had walked at his side at
Eudora's funeral; but they had not spoken a word to each other.
He glanced up in surprise as she entered, and she noticed that he was
unshaved, and that he looked unusually old; but as she had always
thought of him as an old man the change in his appearance did not
move her. She told him she had been to see Miss Hatchard, and with
what object. She saw that he was astonished; but he made no comment.
"I told her the housework was too hard for me, and I wanted to earn the
money to pay for a hired girl. But I ain't going to pay for her: you've
got to. I want to have some money of my own."
Mr. Royall's bushy black eyebrows were drawn together in a frown,
and he sat drumming with ink-stained nails on the edge of his desk.
"What do you want to earn money for?" he asked.
"So's to get away when I want to."
"Why do you want to get away?"
Her contempt flashed out. "Do you suppose anybody'd stay at North

Dormer if they could help it? You wouldn't, folks say!"
With lowered head he asked: "Where'd you go to?"
"Anywhere where I can earn my living. I'll try here first, and if I can't
do it here I'll go somewhere else. I'll go up the Mountain if I have to."
She paused on this threat, and saw that it had taken effect. "I want you
should get Miss Hatchard and the selectmen to take me at the library:
and I want a woman here in the house with me," she repeated.
Mr. Royall had grown exceedingly pale. When she ended he stood up
ponderously, leaning against the desk; and for a second or two they
looked at each other.
"See here," he said at length as though utterance were difficult, "there's
something I've been wanting to say to you; I'd ought to have said it
before. I want you to marry me."
The girl still stared at him without moving. "I want you to marry me,"
he repeated, clearing his throat. "The minister'll be up here next Sunday
and we can fix it up then. Or I'll drive you down to Hepburn to the
Justice, and