So Pearl came, and to-night she sat blinking at the leaping flame in the open stove while the two women ate their supper in the long spring evening.
"I brought some things home in my bag," said Miss Upton, "but most o' them are comin' out Monday."
"Put in a good day, did you?" asked Charlotte, who, now that her mind was relieved of rebukes, was ready to listen to the tales she always expected when Miss Mehitable returned from her trips.
"Yes, I think I did pretty well," was the answer.
But the widow regarded her friend with dissatisfaction. This dispirited manner was very different from the effervescence which usually bubbled over in anecdote.
"Well, next time don't stay till you're worn to a frazzle," she said.
"I missed the train, Charlotte. That was what happened."
"Well, didn't Mr. Barry have anything to say comin' out on the train?" asked Mrs. Whipp, determined to get some of her usual proxy satisfaction from Miss Upton's outing.
"I never saw him till we got to Keefe. Oh, Charlotte, if I'd ever met a boy like him when I was young I wouldn't be keepin' a store now with another woman and a cat."
"H'm, you're better off as you are. Ben Barry's young yet. He'll be in plenty of mischief before he's forty. His mother was in the shop to-day. With all her money it's queer she never married again."