"Did you think I could be hard about such a thing as that? It was perfectly
right. O Mrs. Bolton!" She stopped laughing and began to cry; she put away
Mrs. Bolton's carefully offered hand, she threw herself upon the bony
structure of her bosom, and buried her face sobbing in the leathery folds
of her neck.
Mrs. Bolton suffered her embrace above the old dog, who fled with a cry of
rheumatic apprehension from the sweep of Miss Kilburn's skirts, and then
came back and snuffed at them in a vain effort to recall her.
"Well, go in and lay down by the stove," said Mrs. Bolton, with a divided
interest, while she beat Miss Kilburn's back with her bony palm in sign of
sympathy. But the dog went off up the lane, and stood there by the pasture
bars, barking abstractedly at intervals.