II
For years the house at 93 Sloan Street had displayed a sign announcing that it was “to let or for sale,” and these words might as well have been followed by “take it or leave it,” for that was the owner’s attitude.
It was a hopeless house, dark, damp, and badly arranged, standing in a garden where enormous old trees cast so dense a shade over the front lawn that not even grass would thrive. As for the back garden, only the queerest, most obstinate, ancient shrubs were there, huddled against the side fence, because anything less tenacious was inevitably carried away by the river in its annual spring flood.
Just now the river was low, dolloping along dejectedly between its brown and uninteresting banks. Everything was brown—the water, the bare trees, the fields, the road in front, and No. 93 itself. Altogether the breath of life had gone out of Sloan Street, and to any one coming down from the sunny, breezy hilltop it seemed a sorry spectacle.
Some one had come down from the hilltop this morning—a brisk, neat little red-haired lady. She came smartly along the road to No. 93, pushed open the gate, and walked up the garden path. She saw the portly, white-haired lady standing on the veranda, looking down the road.
“Good morning!” said the visitor. “I’m your neighbor, Mrs. Aldrich.”
She waited at the foot of the steps, because she thought she would not go up on the veranda until she was invited. Well, she never was invited.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked, with honest and neighborly good will.
The portly lady looked down at her as if doubtful whether such a creature could really exist.
“Thank you, there is not,” she said.