"Mr. Rath, the artist, came down in the stage with you, didn't he?" Miss Matilda went on. "What kind of a young man was he? Somebody'll tell you, so it might as well be me, what's brought him here. Mrs. Cowmull's trying to marry off her niece, Emily Mead. There aren't any men in town, so she advertised. She gave it out that she wanted a boarder, but everybody see through that. That's what marriage has come to these days, catching men to board 'em and then marrying them when they're thinking of something else. I thank Heaven I ain't had nothing to do with any marriage. They're a bad business. There, that's your supper."
Jane started slightly. Her own cold fish and lukewarm tea sat before her. "Shan't I take Aunt Susan's up first?" she asked, recollecting that she still had some lunch in her bag, and that Matilda would be leaving early in the morning.
"No need. She likes things cold. You ought to see her face if she gets anything boiling in her mouth. It's no use to give her nothing hot. You'd think it was a snake. I give it up the third time she burnt her."
"But I ought to go up and see her, I think; she hasn't seen me since I was such a little girl."
"No need. You go ahead and enjoy your supper without bothering over her. She knows you're here, and she isn't one that's interested in things. She'll read an old shelf paper for hours, but carry her up a new paper and like as not when you get to the bed with it, you'll find her asleep. She sleeps a lot."
Jane—thus urged—picked the chilled fish with a fork and considered.
"I'll show you about the house after you've done eating," the aunt continued presently; "it's easy taken care of, for I keep it all shut up. Just Susan's room and mine and the kitchen is open. The neighbors won't bother you, for I give them to understand long ago as I wasn't one with time to waste. There isn't any one in the place that a woman with any sense would want to bother with, anyhow."
"I don't fancy that I'll have time to be lonesome," smiled Jane, bravely swallowing some tea.
"You'd have if it wasn't for the garden. I don't know whatever in the world makes Susan set such store by that garden. She will have it that it shall be kept up in memory of her husband, and you never saw such weeds. I've often sat down backwards when one come up—often."
"I can't see it at all," with a glance out of the window.