“Yes,” said Katy, following him with her eyes, “he knows your failing, Harvey; he thinks with me, now the old gentleman is gone, you will want a careful body to take care of your concerns.”
The peddler was busied in making arrangements for his departure, and he took no notice of this insinuation, while the spinster returned again to the attack. She had lived so many years in expectation of a termination to her hopes, so different from that which now seemed likely to occur, that the idea of separation began to give her more uneasiness than she had thought herself capable of feeling, about a man so destitute and friendless.
“Have you another house to go to?” inquired Katy.
“Providence will provide me with a home.”
“Yes,” said the housekeeper, “but maybe ’twill not be to your liking.”
“The poor must not be difficult.”
“I’m sure I’m anything but a difficult body,” cried the spinster, very hastily; “but I love to see things becoming, and in their places; yet I wouldn’t be hard to persuade to leave this place myself. I can’t say I altogether like the ways of the people hereabouts.”
“The valley is lovely,” said the peddler, with fervor, “and the people like all the race of man. But to me it matters nothing; all places are now alike, and all faces equally strange.” As he spoke he dropped the article he was packing from his hand, and seated himself on a chest, with a look of vacant misery.
“Not so, not so,” said Katy, shoving her chair nearer to the place where the peddler sat. “Not so, Harvey, you must know me at least; my face cannot be strange to you.”
Birch turned his eyes slowly on her countenance, which exhibited more of feeling, and less of self, than he had ever seen there before; he took her hand kindly, and his own features lost some of their painful expression, as he said,—