Something like an hour before this, Annie had dismissed her classes and locked up the school-house for the night. As she did so, she mentally wondered if she should ever have the strength to walk home.
The day had been one long-drawn out torture from its first waking moments—indeed there seemed to have been nothing but anguish since her interview with Isabel the previous day, not even the oblivion of sleep. Her impulse, and her grandmother’s advice, had been to remain at home; but she had already left the school unopened on the fatal Tuesday, in the shock of the news of Albert’s death: to absent herself a second day might prejudice the trustees against her. Besides, the occupation might serve to divert her thoughts.
Perhaps the trustees were satisfied, she said to herself now, locking the door, but there certainly had been no relief in the day’s labor. The little children had been unwontedly stupid and trying; the older boys, some of them almost of her own age, had never before seemed so unruly and loutishly impertinent. Even these experiences alone would have availed to discourage her; as it was they added the stinging of insects to her great heartache. With some organizations, the lesser pain nullifies the other. She seemed to have a capacity for suffering, now, which took in, and made the most of, every element of agony, great and small. She turned from the rusty, squat little old building and began her journey homeward, with hanging head and a deadly sense of weakness, physical and spiritual, crushing her whole being.
Milton Squires had been watching for her appearance for some time, from a sheltering ridge of berry-bushes and wall beyond the school, and he hurried now to overtake her, clumsily professing surprise at the meeting.
“I jes happened up this way,” he said, “Dunnao when I be’n up here on this road b’fore. Never dreampt o’ seein’ yeou.”
She made answer of some sort, as unintelligible and meaningless to herself as to him. She did not know whether it was a relief or otherwise that he was evidently going to walk home with her. Perhaps, if she let him do all the talking, the companionship would help her to get over the ordeal of the return less miserably. But she could not, and she would not, talk.
“I kind o’ thought mebbe you’d shet up schewl fer a week ’r sao,” he proceeded, ingratiatingly, “but then agin I said to m’self ‘no siree, she ain’t thet kine of a gal. Ef she’s got any work to dew, she jes’ does it, rain ’r shine’. Thet’s what I said. Pooty bad business, wa’n’t it, this death of yer cousin?”
“Dreadful!” she murmured, wishing he would talk of something else.
“Yes, sir, it’s about’s bad’s they make ’em. Some queer things ’baout it tew. I s’pose yeh ain’t heerd no gossup ’baout it, hev yeh?”