Annie Kilburn

"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 added, helplessly, "It wasn't his wish."

"I should have thought he would have liked to be buried alongside of your

mother," said Mrs. Gerrish. "But the Judge always _was_ a little

peculiar. I presume you can have the name and the date put on the monument

just the same."

Annie flushed at this intimate comment and suggestion from a woman whom as

a girl she had never admitted to familiarity with her, but had tolerated

her because she was such a harmless simpleton, and hung upon other girls

whom she liked better. The word monument cowed her, however. She was afraid

they might begin to talk about the soldiers' monument. She answered

hastily, and began to ask them about their families.

Mrs. Wilmington, who had no children, and Mrs. Putney, who had one, spoke

of Mrs. Gerrish's large family. She had four children, and she refused the

praises of her friends for them, though she celebrated them herself. "You

ought to have seen the two little girls that Ellen lost, Annie," she said.

"Ellen Putney, I don't see how you ever got over that. Those two lovely,

healthy children gone, and poor little Winthrop left! I always did say it

was too hard."

She had married a clerk in the principal dry-goods store, who had prospered

rapidly, and was now one of the first business men of the place, and had an

ambition to be a leading citizen. She believed in his fitness to deal with

the questions of religion and education which he took part in, and was

always quoting Mr. Gerrish. She called him Mr. Gerrish so much that other

people began to call him so too. But Mrs. Putney's husband held out against

it, and had the habit of returning the little man's ceremonious salutations

with an easy, "Hello, Billy," "Good morning, Billy." It was his theory that

this was good for Gerrish, who might otherwise have forgotten when

everybody called him Billy. He was one of the old Putneys; and he was a

lawyer by profession.

Mrs. Wilmington's husband had come to Hatboro' since Annie's long absence

began; he had capital, and he had started a stocking-mill in Hatboro'.

He was much older than his wife, whom he had married after a protracted

widowerhood. She had one of the best houses and the most richly furnished

in Hatboro'. She and Mrs. Putney saw Mrs. Gerrish at rare intervals, and in

observance of some notable fact of their girlish friendship like the

present.