"That's very pleasant to think of now, I'm sure. But I hear she's made a very extraordinary arrangement about the property. You can't tell, though, to be sure, about all you hear, nowadays."
"No, Mrs. Gimp. That is very true," said Mrs. Gartney.
"Everybody always expected that it would all come to you. At least, to your daughter. She seemed to make so much of her."
"My daughter is quite satisfied, and we for her."
"Well, I must say!—and so Mr. Armstrong is to board here, now? A little out of the way of most of the parish, isn't it? I never could see, exactly, what put it into his head to come so far. Not but what he makes out to do his duty as a pastor, pretty prompt, too. I don't hear any complaints. He's rather off and on about settling, though. I guess he's a man that keeps his intentions pretty close to himself—and all his affairs, for that matter. Of course he's a perfect right to. But I will say I like to know all about folks from the beginning. It aggravates me to have to begin in the middle. I tell Serena, it's just like reading a book when the first volume's lost. I don't suppose I'm much more curious than other people; but I should like to know just how old he is, for one thing; and who his father and mother were; and where he came from in the first place, and what he lives on, for 'tain't our salary, I know that; he's given away more'n half of it a'ready—right here in the village. I've said to my husband, forty times, if I've said it once, 'I declare, I've a great mind to ask him myself, straight out, just to see what he'll say.'"
"And why not?" asked a voice, pleasantly, behind her.
Mr. Armstrong had come in, unheard by the lady in her own rush of words, and had approached too near, as this suddenly ceased, to be able to escape again unnoticed.
Mis' Battis told Luther Goodell afterwards, that she "jest looked in from the next room, at that, and if ever a woman felt cheap—all over—and as if she hadn't a right to her own toes and fingers, and as if every thread and stitch on her turned mean, all at once—it was Mrs. Gimp, that minit!"
"Has Faith returned?" Mr. Armstrong asked, of Mrs. Gartney, after a little pause in which Mrs. Gimp showed no disposition to develop into deed her forty-times declared "great mind."
"I think not. She said she would remain an hour or two with Glory, and help her to arrange those matters she came in, this morning, to ask us about."