Annie Kilburn

"It was all perfectly right, Mr. Bolton," said Miss Kilburn.

"His wife died anyway, more than a year ago," said Bolton, as if the fact

completed his atonement to Miss Kilburn, "_Git_ ep! I told him from,

the start that it had got to be a temporary thing, an' 't I only took him

till he could git settled somehow. I guess he means to go to house-keepin',

if he can git the right kind of a house-keeper; he wants an old one. If it

was a young one, I guess he wouldn't have any great trouble, if he went

about it the right way." Bolton's sarcasm was merely a race sarcasm. He was

a very mild man, and his thick-growing eyelashes softened and shadowed his

grey eyes, and gave his lean face pathos.

"You could have let him stay till he had found a suitable place," said Miss

Kilburn.

"Oh, I wa'n't goin' to do _that_," said Bolton. "But I'm 'bliged to

you just the same."

They came up in sight of the old square house, standing back a good

distance from the road, with a broad sweep of grass sloping down before it

into a little valley, and rising again to the wall fencing the grounds from

the street. The wall was overhung there by a company of magnificent elms,

which turned and formed one side of the avenue leading to the house. Their

tops met and mixed somewhat incongruously with those of the stiff dark

maples which more densely shaded the other side of the lane.

Bolton drove into their gloom, and then out into the wide sunny space at

the side of the house where Miss Kilburn had alighted so often with her

father. Bolton's dog, grown now so very old as to be weak-minded, barked

crazily at his master, and then, recognising him, broke into an imbecile

whimper, and went back and coiled his rheumatism up in the sun on a warm

stone before the door. Mrs. Bolton had to step over him as she came out,

formally supporting her right elbow with her left hand as she offered the

other in greeting to Miss Kilburn, with a look of question at her husband.

Miss Kilburn intercepted the look, and began to laugh.

All was unchanged, and all so strange; it seemed as if her father must both

get down with her from the carriage and come to meet her from the house.

Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the

patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds

underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and

blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and

the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses and trees; the woodshed

stretching with its low board arches to the barn, and the milk-pans tilted

to sun against the underpinning of the L, and Mrs. Bolton's pot plants in

the kitchen window.