I'll shut the door after
you, if you don't object. I feel every draught o' cold air."
"I've always heard she was a great hand to make a poor mouth. Wa'n't
she from somewheres up Parsley way?" whispered Miss Rebecca, as they
stumbled in the half-light.
"Poor meechin' body, wherever she come from," replied Mrs. Trimble, as
she knocked at the door.
There was silence for a moment after this unusual sound; then one of
the Bray sisters opened the door. The eager guests stared into a
small, low room, brown with age, and gray, too, as if former dust and
cobwebs could not be made wholly to disappear. The two elderly women
who stood there looked like captives. Their withered faces wore a look
of apprehension, and the room itself was more bare and plain than was
fitting to their evident refinement of character and self-respect.
There was an uncovered small table in the middle of the floor, with
some crackers on a plate; and, for some reason or other, this added a
great deal to the general desolation.
But Miss Ann Bray, the elder sister, who carried her right arm in a
sling, with piteously drooping fingers, gazed at the visitors with
radiant joy. She had not seen them arrive.
The one window gave only the view at the back of the house, across the
fields, and their coming was indeed a surprise. The next minute she
was laughing and crying together. "Oh, sister!" she said, "if here
ain't our dear Mis' Trimble!--an' my heart o' goodness, 'tis 'Becca
Wright, too! What dear good creatur's you be! I've felt all day as if
something good was goin' to happen, an' was just sayin' to myself
'twas most sundown now, but I wouldn't let on to Mandany I'd give up
hope quite yet.
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