Bressant

No more conversation was had upon the subject at that time. The

professor went down to his breakfast, and, having disposed of it with

good appetite, and smoked his morning-pipe with quiet satisfaction,

Michael brought Dolly and the wagon round to the front door, the old

gentleman clambered in, and off they rattled to Abbie's boarding-house.

This "Abbie," as she was called in the village--indeed, not more than

one in a hundred knew her other name--had long been an institution among

the townspeople. When she first became a resident was uncertain: some

said more, some less than twenty years ago. Certain it was, at all

events, that she had grown, during her sojourn there, from a young and

comely, though sober-faced woman, to considerably more than middle age;

though time had perhaps used her less kindly than most women in her

situation in life, which is saying a good deal. No one could tell where

she came from, or what her previous life had been. She had first made

her appearance as purchaser of the house in which she had ever since

lived, and kept boarders. She was uncommunicative, without seeming

offensively reserved; quietly tenacious of her rights, though far from

grasping or aggressive, and was endowed with decided executive ability.

She had made a most unexceptionable landlady; one or two of her

boarders had been with her almost since the inception of her enterprise;

while all the better class of transient visitors to the village, which

had a moderate popularity as a summer resort, made their first

application for rooms to her.

Some ten or twelve years after her establishment, Professor Valeyon and

his family had moved into town. They had not taken up their quarters at

Abbie's, though she could easily have accommodated them, as far as room

went; a circumstance which caused all the more surprise in some

quarters, because there seemed to have been some previous acquaintance

between herself and the professor. But Abbie was even less talkative

upon this than upon other subjects; and no one ventured to catechise the

grave and forcible-looking man who was the only other source of possible

information. After a time, he settled in the house which subsequently

became the parsonage; and, since no particular relations were kept up

between his family and the boarding-house keeper, curiosity and comment

died a natural death, and it even came to be doubted whether they ever

had met each other before, after all.

Abbie, at the present time, was a taciturn personage, neither tall nor

short, stout nor thin. Her eyebrows were straight and strongly marked,

and much darker than her hair, which, indeed, had begun to turn gray

several years before. There was nothing especially noticeable in her

other features, except that the lips were habitually compressed, and the

chin so square-cut and firm as to be almost masculine. A good many

little wrinkles could be traced around the mouth, and at the corners of

the eyes, especially when she was much depressed; and sometimes her

expression was very hard and stern. Her manners were quite

undemonstrative; they seemed to be neither fastidious nor the reverse,

and it would have been hard to predicate from them in what station of

life she had been brought up. She certainly adapted herself well to

whatever society she happened to be with; neither patricians nor

plebeians found any thing to criticise; but, whether this were the

result of tact, or owing merely to the adoption of a negative standard,

no one could say. In language she was uniformly correct, without seeming

at all scholastic; she occasionally used the idioms and dialectic

peculiarities of those around her, though never with the air of being

heedlessly betrayed into them.