The Old Gray Homestead

by Frances Parkinson Keyes

Sally leaned forward.

"No, she doesn't. She's all in black—and my! isn't she pretty? She seems to be stopping and looking around—why don't you ask her if you could be of any help?"

Austin nodded, and pulled in his reins. "I wonder if I could—" he began, but stopped abruptly, realizing that the lady in the buggy coming towards them had also stopped, and spoken the very same words. Inevitably they all smiled, and the stranger began again.

"I wonder if you could tell me how to get to Mr. Howard Gray's house," she said. "I was told at the hotel to drive along this road as far as a large white house—the first one I came to—and then turn to the right. But I don't see any road."

"There isn't any, at this time of year," said Sally, laughing,—"nothing but mud. You have to wallow through that field, and go up a hill, and down a hill, and along a little farther, and then you come to the house. Just follow us—we're going there. I'm Howard Gray's eldest daughter Sally, and this is my brother Austin."

"Oh! then perhaps you can tell me—before I intrude—if it would be any use—whether you think that possibly—whether under any circumstances —well, if your mother would be good enough to let me come and live at her house a little while?"

By this time Sally and Austin had both realized two things: first, that the person with whom they were talking belonged to quite a different world from their own—the fact was written large in her clothing, in her manner, in the very tones of her voice; and, second, that in spite of her pale face and widow's veil, she was even younger than they were, a girl hardly out of her teens.

"I'm not very well," she went on rapidly, before they could answer, "and my doctor told me to go away to some quiet place in the country until I could get—get rested a little. I spent a summer here with my mother when I was a little girl, and I remembered how lovely it was, and so I came back. But the hotel has run down so that I don't think I can possibly stay there; and yet I can't bear to go away from this beautiful, peaceful river-valley—it's just what I've been longing to find. I happened to overhear some one talking about Mrs. Gray, and saying that she might consider taking me in. So I hired this buggy and started out to find her and ask. Oh, don't you think she would?"

Sally and Austin exchanged glances. "Mother never has taken any boarders, she's always been too busy," began the former; then, seeing the swift look of disappointment on the sad little face, "but she might. It wouldn't do any harm to ask, anyway. We'll drive ahead, and show you how to get there."

The Gray family had been one of local prominence ever since Colonial days, and James Gray, who built the dignified, spacious homestead now occupied by his grandson's family, had been a man of some education and wealth. His son Thomas inherited the house, but only a fourth of the fortune, as he had three sisters. Thomas had but one child, Howard, whose prospects for prosperity seemed excellent; but he grew up a dreamy, irresolute, studious chap, a striking contrast to the sturdy yeoman type from which he had sprung—one of those freaks of heredity that are hard to explain. He went to Dartmouth College, travelled a little, showed a disposition to read—and even to write—verses. As a teacher he probably would have been successful; but his father was determined that he should become a farmer, and Howard had neither the energy nor the disposition to oppose him; he proved a complete failure. He married young, and, it was generally considered, beneath him; for Mary Austin, with a heart of gold and a disposition like sunshine, had little wealth or breeding and less education to commend her; and she was herself too easy-going and contented to prove the prod that Howard sadly needed in his wife. Children came thick and fast; the eldest, James, had now gone South; the second daughter, Ruth, was already married to a struggling storekeeper living in White Water; Sally taught school; but the others were all still at home, and all, except Austin, too young to be self-supporting—Thomas, Molly, Katherine, and Edith. They had all caught their father's facility for correct speech, rare in northern New England; most of them his love of books, his formless and unfulfilled ambitions; more than one the shiftlessness and incompetence that come partly from natural bent and partly from hopelessness; while Sally and Thomas alone possessed the sunny disposition and the ability to see the bright side of everything and the good in everybody which was their mother's legacy to them.