Author of "A Humble Romance,"
"A New EnglandNun,"
"Pembroke," "The People of Our
Neighborhood," etc.
with pictures
New York
Doubleday & McClure Company
Philadelphia
CurtisPublishing Company
1899
Until that summer nobody in our village had ever taken boarders.There had been no real necessity for it, and we had always beenrather proud of the fact. While we were certainly notrich—there was not one positively rich family among us—wewere comfortably provided with all the necessities of life. We didnot need to open our houses, and our closets, and our bureau drawers,and give the freedom of our domestic hearths, and, as it were, ourhousehold gods for playthings, to strangers and their children.
Many of us had to work for our daily bread, but, we were thankfulto say, not in that way. We prided ourselves because there was nosummer hotel with a demoralizing bowling-alley, and one of thosedangerous chutes, in our village. We felt forbiddingly calm andsuperior when now and then some strange city people from Grover, thelarge summer resort six miles from us, travelled up and down our mainstreet seeking board in vain. We plumed ourselves upon our reputationof not taking boarders for love or money.
Nobody had dreamed that there was to be a break at last in ourlong-established custom, and nobody dreamed that the break was to bemade in such a quarter. One of the most well-to-do, if not the mostwell-to-do, of us all, took the first boarders ever taken inLinnville. When Amelia Powers heard of it she said, “Them thathas, gits.”
On the afternoon of the first day of June, six years ago, I wassewing at my sitting-room window. I was making a white muslin dressfor little Alice, my niece, to wear to the Seventeenth-of-Junepicnic. I had been sitting there alone all the afternoon, and it wasalmost four o'clock when I saw Amelia Powers, who lives opposite, andwho had been sewing at her window—I had noticed her arm movingback and forth, disturbing the shadows of the horse-chestnut tree inthe yard—fling open her front door, run out on the piazza, andstand peering around the corner post, with her neck so stretched thatit looked twice as long as before. Then her sister Candace, who haspoor health and seldom ventures out-of-doors, threw up the frontchamber window and leaned out as far as she was able, and stared withher hand shading her eyes from the sun. I could just see her headthrough an opening in the horse-chestnut branches.
Then I heard another door open, and Mrs. Peter Jones, who lives inthe house next below the Powers', came running out. She ran down thewalk to her front gate and leaned over, all twisted sideways, tosee.
Then I heard voices, and there were Adeline Ketchum and her mothercoming down the street, all in a flutter of hurry. Adeline is slenderand nervous; her elbows jerked out, her chin jerked up, and herskirts switched her thin ankles; Mrs. Ketchum is very stout, and shewalked with a kind of quivering flounce. Her face was blazing, and Iknew her bonnet was on hindside before—I was sure that thesprig of purple flowers belonged on the front.
When Adeline and her mother reached Mrs. Peter Jones' gate theystopped, and they all stood there together looking. Then I saw TommyGregg racing along, and I felt positive that his mother had sent himto see what the matter was. She is a good woman, but the most curiousperson in our village. She neve