Annie Kilburn

Except for what she had heard Putney say, and what she learned casually

from the people themselves, she could not have believed he ever did

anything for them. He came and went so elusively, as far as Annie was

concerned, that she knew of his presence in the houses of sickness and

death usually by his little girl, whom she found playing about in the

street before the door with the children of the hands. She seemed to hold

her own among the others in their plays and their squabbles; if she tried

to make up to her, Idella smiled, but she would not be approached, and

Annie's heart went out to the little mischief in as helpless goodwill as

toward the minister himself.

She used to hear his voice through the summer-open windows when he called

upon the Boltons, and wondered if some accident would not bring them

together, but she had to send for Mrs. Bolton at last, and bid her tell Mr.

Peck that she would like to see him before he went away, one night. He

came, and then she began a parrying parley of preliminary nothings before

she could say that she supposed he knew the ladies were going on with their

scheme for the establishment of the Social Union; he admitted vaguely that

he had heard something to that effect, and she added that the invited dance

and supper had been given up.

He remained apparently indifferent to the fact, and she hurried on: "And I

ought to say, Mr. Peck, that nearly every one--every one whose opinion you

would value--agreed with you that it would have been extremely ill-advised,

and--and shocking. And I'm quite ashamed that I should not have seen it

from the beginning; and I hope--I hope you will forgive me if I said things

in my--my excitement that must have--I mean not only what I said to you,

but what I said to others; and I assure you that I regret them, and--"

She went on and repeated herself at length, and he listened patiently, but

as if the matter had not really concerned either of them personally. She

had to conclude that what she had said of him had not reached him, and she

ended by confessing that she had clung to the Social Union project because

it seemed the only thing in which her attempts to do good were not

mischievous.

Mr. Peck's thin face kindled with a friendlier interest than it had shown

while the question at all related to himself, and a light of something that

she took for humorous compassion came into his large, pale blue eyes. At

least it was intelligence; and perhaps the woman nature craves this as much

as it is supposed to crave sympathy; perhaps the two are finally one.