The Brimming Cup

Mr. Welles felt a trifle bewildered by this, and showed it. She

explained further, "But seriously, I must tell you that she is a

perfectly harmless and quite uninteresting old herb-gatherer, although

the children in the village are a little afraid of her, because she is

an Indian, the only one they have ever seen. She really is an Indian

too. She knows every inch of our valley and the mountains better than

any lumberman or hunter or fisherman in Ashley. She often goes off and

doesn't come back for days. I haven't the least idea where she stays.

But she's very good to our children when she's here, and I like her

capacity for monumental silence. It gives her very occasional remarks an

oracular air, even though you know it's only because she doesn't often

open her lips. She helps a little with the house-work, too, although she

always looks so absent-minded, as though she were thinking of something

very far away. She's quite capable of preparing a good meal, for all she

never seems to notice what she's up to. And she's the last member of our

family except the very coming-and-going little maids I get once in a

while. Ashley is unlike the rest of the world in that it is hard to get

domestic servants here.

"Now let me see, whom next to introduce to you. You know all your

immediate neighbors now. I shall have to begin on Ashley itself. Perhaps

our minister and his wife. They live in the high-porticoed,

tall-pillared white old house next door to the church in the village, on

the opposite side from the church-yard. They are Ashleyans of the oldest

rock. Both of them were born here, and have always lived here. Mr.

Bayweather is seventy-five years old and has never had any other parish.

I do believe the very best thing I can do for you is to send you

straight to them, this minute. There's nothing Mr. Bayweather doesn't

know about the place or the people. He has a collection of Ashleyana of

all sorts, records, deeds, titles, old letters, family trees. And for

the last forty years he has been very busy writing a history of Ashley."

"A history of Ashley?" exclaimed Vincent.

"A history of Ashley," she answered, level-browed.

Mr. Welles had the impression that a "side-wipe" had been exchanged in

which he had not shared.

Vincent now asked irrelevantly, "Do you go to church yourself?"

"Oh yes," she answered, "I go, I like to go. And I take the children."

She turned her head so that she looked down at her long hands in her

lap, as she added, "I think going to church is a refining influence in

children's lives, don't you?"