Katharine would have given a crisp reply had not her attention been distracted by Reuben's movements, who was waiting to receive his fare, yet in such terror of the pug's snapping jaws that he was stepping up and down in a lively fashion, as he rescued one foot and then the other from his enemy's attack.
"'Pears to blame me for bein' shut up in that there basket, don't he? When anybody knows 'twasn't my fault at all. I hain't enj'yed the trip no more'n what he has, hearin' him yelp that continual, an' I must say I didn't expect, at my time o' life, to commence drivin' stage for dogs. Here, sis, is your change. Good day to ye, an' a good welcome, I hope."
"Humph! You don't speak as if you really 'hoped' it, but quite the reverse!" returned Punch's mistress, more shrewdly than courteously.
"Dreadful smart, ain't ye?" said Reuben, and drove away, putting his horn to his lips, and thereby drowning any further remarks which the stranger might have addressed to him.
Lifting the ungainly brute in her arms, the girl now turned and surveyed the house beyond the gate, her heart far heavier with homesickness than seemed consistent with her outward, flippant bearing.
What she saw was a wide, rambling frame house; wherever they showed between the clambering vines which encircled it, its clapboards glistening white and its shutters vividly green. The few leaves still left upon the vines were scarlet, while behind the low roof rose maples in the full glory of their autumn reds and yellows. The long front yard was green and well kept, and the borders beside the path were gay with chrysanthemums, though between these showed the frost-blackened foliage of tenderer plants. Upon the porch was a woman with a shawl over her head, apparently shivering in the wind which tossed the maple boughs, and awaiting an explanation of this arrival.
"A pretty picture!" admitted Katharine, who fancied herself artistic, "but so lonesome it gives me the hypo! And that—that, I suppose, is my Aunt Eunice. Well, Punch, come on! Let's get it over with!"
The Widow Sprigg had remained motionless, but keenly observant, and her thoughts were:
"If that ain't a Maitland, I never knew the breed. And I reckon I do know it, bein's me an' my fam'ly has lived cheek by jowl with them an' their fam'ly since ever was. But which Maitland it is, or what in reason she's come for, beats me."
Then, as the stranger walked coolly through the gateway, leaving her luggage on the sidewalk outside, Susanna sniffed, and remarked—for anybody to hear who chose: