On through to their destination there was silence between the visitors—the silence of two persons engrossed in inner contemplations. As for Mr. Talbot, he was concerned with restraining his mettlesome conveyance.
At their journey’s end, the bungalow where it nestled against a background of mountains half a mile on beyond the clumping of small houses that was the village, made a gladdening sight for the Bugbees, what with its broad front windows shining redly in the clear cold and a slender spindle of smoke rising straight up the air from the mouth of its big stone chimney. Mrs. Bugbee hurried inside to establish liaison with the widow who was a friend to the Talbot family. Her husband tarried on the snow-piled veranda with his belongings piled about him.
“Let’s see, now,” Mr. Talbot said speculatively. “There’s your fare over from the depot—we’ll call that six dollars even for the two of you. And two dollars more fur your valises, I guess that’d be fair, considerin’. That comes to eight. Then there was some odds and ends I done myself fur you yistiddy ez an accommodation—shovelin’ out this path here and so forth. That’ll be about six dollars, I sh’d say.”
Mr. Bugbee unpocketed a fold of bills.
“Hold on,” bade Mr. Talbot. “Then I got you in three cords of firewood at ten dollars a cord; that mounts up to thirty more. You’re lucky I ain’t chargin’ you full city prices,” he continued, studying Mr. Bugbee’s expression. “There’s some around here would, namin’ no names. But you folks bein’ sent on by Mr. Rousseau I’m makin’ you a rate on that firewood. Thanky.”
He accepted payment.
“Oh, yes, there’s an order of provisions in the house, too, but the account fur them’ll be rendered in your reg’lar weekly bills. I’ll make the deliveries without extry cost,” he promised generously. “Just call freely fur more stuff ez you need it. I run the leadin’ grocery down below, you understand. There’s an opposition grocery but I wouldn’t recommend no stranger to do his tradin’ there unlessen he checked off the statements mighty close. Well, good-by and see you later.”
Mr. Bugbee, mechanically holding a depleted roll in his numbed grasp, watched the flivver as it lurched back down the highway. “But at least the sunrise was an unqualified success,” he remarked softly to himself. He further comforted himself with the philosophies that first impressions did not necessarily count and that a poor beginning often made a good ending and that to all rules there were exceptions, et cetera, et cetera.
Lack of space forbids that we should trace our two sojourners step by step and day by day through the ensuing fortnight. A few vignettes, a few small thumb-nail views of them, taken in the privacy of their fireside, will suffice, this chronicler hopes, progressively to suggest the course of developments in pursuance of their ambitions for the happiness of the dwellers in that isolated hamlet of Pleasant Cove.
For example, an intimate little scene was enacted before the hearthstone on the second evening but one following their arrival.