Mrs. Etherege remained a few days longer at Cross Corners. As Mis' Battis judiciously remarked, "after a weddin' or a funeral, there ought to be somebody to stay a while and cheer up the mourners."
This visit, that had been so full of happenings, was to have a strange occurrence still to mark it, before all fell again into the usual order.
Aunt Etherege was to go on Thursday. On Wednesday, the three ladies sat together in the cool, open parlor, where Mr. Armstrong, walking over from the Old House, had joined them. He had the July number of the Mishaumok in his hand, and a finger between the fresh-cut leaves at a poem he would read them.
Just as he had finished the last stanza, amidst a hush of the room that paid tribute to the beauty of the lines and his perfect rendering of them, wheels came round from the high road into the lane.
"It is Mr. Gartney come back from Sedgely," said Aunt Etherege, looking from her window, between the blinds. "Whom on earth has he picked up to bring with him?"
A thin, angular figure of a woman, destitute of crinoline, wearing big boots, and a bonnet that ignored the fashion, and carrying in her hand a black enameled leather bag, was alighting as she spoke, at the gate.
"Mother!" said Faith, leaning forward, and glancing out, also, "it looks like—it is—Nurse Sampson!"
And she put her work hastily from her lap, and rose to go out at the side door, to meet and welcome her.
To do this, she had to pass by Mr. Armstrong. How came that rigid look, that deadly paleness, to his face? What spasm of pain made him clutch the pamphlet he held with fingers that grew white about the nails?
Faith stopped, startled.