“I knew there was some such story as that back of them,” declared Billy. “But how do you suppose they came here?”
“To get away from—everybody, I suspect,” replied Arkwright. “That would be like them. They were very proud; and it isn't easy, you know, to be nobody where you've been somebody. It doesn't hurt quite so hard—to be nobody where you've never been anything but nobody.”
“I suppose so,” sighed Billy. “Still—they must have had friends.”
“They did, of course; but when the love of one's friends becomes too highly seasoned with pity, it doesn't make a pleasant morsel to swallow, specially if you don't like the taste of the pity—and there are people who don't, you know. The Greggorys were that kind. They were morbidly so. From their cheap little cottage, where they did their own work, they stepped out in their shabby garments and old-fashioned hats with heads even more proudly erect than in the old days when their home and their gowns and their doings were the admiration and envy of the town. You see, they didn't want—that pity.”
“I do see,” cried Billy, her face aglow with sudden understanding; “and I don't believe pity would be—nice!” Her own chin was held high as she spoke.
“It must have been hard, indeed,” murmured Aunt Hannah with a sigh, as she set down her teacup.
“It was,” nodded Arkwright. “Of course Mrs. Greggory, with her crippled foot, could do nothing to bring in any money except to sew a little. It all depended on Alice; and when matters got to their worst she began to teach. She was fond of music, and could play the piano well; and of course she had had the best instruction she could get from city teachers only twenty miles away from our home town. Young as she was—about seventeen when she began to teach, I think—she got a few beginners right away, and in two years she had worked up quite a class, meanwhile keeping on with her own studies, herself.
“They might have carried the thing through, maybe,” continued Arkwright, “and never apparently known that the 'pity' existed, if it hadn't been for some ugly rumors that suddenly arose attacking the Judge's honesty in an old matter that somebody raked up. That was too much. Under this last straw their courage broke utterly. Alice dismissed every pupil, sold almost all their remaining goods—they had lots of quite valuable heirlooms; I suspect that's where your Lowestoft teapot came in—and with the money thus gained they left town. Until they could go, they scarcely showed themselves once on the street, they were never at home to callers, and they left without telling one soul where they were going, so far as we could ever learn.”
“Why, the poor dears!” cried Billy. “How they must have suffered! But things will be different now. You'll go to see them, of course, and—” At the look that came into Arkwright's face, she stopped in surprise.
“You forget; they wouldn't wish to see me,” demurred the man. And again Billy noticed the odd constraint in his voice.