III
“There go pretty near every one of the Fernalds, down to the station. Land, but there’s a lot of ’em, counting the children. I suppose they’re
going to meet Guy’s wife’s brother, that they’ve got up here to lead these Christmas doings to-night. Queer idea, it strikes me.”
Miss Jane Pollock, ensconced behind the thick “lace curtains” of her “best parlour,” addressed her sister, who lay on the couch in the sitting-room behind, an invalid who could seldom get out, but to whom Miss Jane was accustomed faithfully to report every particle of current news.
“I suppose they think,” Miss Jane went on, with asperity, “they’re going to fix up the fuss in that church, with their greens and their city minister preaching brotherly love. I can tell him he’ll have to preach a pretty powerful sermon to reach old George Tomlinson and Asa Fraser, and make ’em notice each other as they pass by. And when I see Maria Hill coming toward me with a smile on her face and her hand out I’ll know something’s happened.”
“I don’t suppose,” said the invalid sister rather timidly, from her couch, “you would feel, Sister, as if you could put out your hand to her first?”
“No, I don’t,” retorted Miss Jane, very positively. “And I don’t see how you can think it, Deborah. You know perfectly well it was Maria Hill that started the whole thing—and then talked about me as if I was the one. How that woman did talk—and talks yet! Don’t get me thinking about it. It’s Christmas Day, and I want to keep my mind off such disgraceful things as church quarrels—if the Fernald family’ll let me. A pretty bold thing to do, I call it—open up that church on their own responsibility, and expect folks to come, and forget the past. —Debby, I wish you could see Oliver’s wife, in those furs of hers. She holds her head as high as ever—but she’s the only one of ’em that does it disagreeably—I’ll say that for
’em, if they are all city folks now. And of course she isn’t a Fernald. —Here comes Nancy and her husband. That girl don’t look a minute older’n when she was married, five years ago. My, but she’s got a lot of style! I must say her skirts don’t hang like any North Estabrook dressmaker can make ’em. They’re walking—hurrying up to catch the rest. Sam Burnett’s a good-looking man, but he’s getting a little stout.”
“Jane,” said the invalid sister, wistfully, “I wish I could go to-night.”