Mrs. Tripp ventured a hinted question concerning the teacher's errand at Trumet. The reply being noncommittal, the widow cheerfully prophesied that she guessed 'twas going to rain or snow next day. “It's about time for the line storm,” she added.
But it did not storm, although a brisk, cold gale was blowing when, after breakfast next morning, the “horse and team,” with Bailey in his Sunday suit and overcoat, and Miss Dawes on the buggy seat beside him, turned out of the boarding-house yard and started on the twelve-mile journey to Trumet.
It was a bleak ride. Denboro, the village adjoining Bayport on the bay side, is a pretty place, with old elms and silverleafs shading the main street in summer, and with substantial houses set each in its trim yard. But beyond Denboro the Trumet road winds out over rolling, bare hills, with cranberry bogs, now flooded and skimmed with ice, in the hollows between them, clumps of bayberry and beach-plum bushes scattered over their rounded slopes, and white scars in their sides showing where the cranberry growers have cut away the thin layer of coarse grass and moss to reach the sand beneath, sand which they use in preparing their bogs for the new vines.
And the wind! There is always a breeze along the Trumet road, even in summer—when the mosquitoes lie in wait to leeward like buccaneers until, sighting the luckless wayfarer in the offing, they drive down before the wind in clouds, literally to eat him alive. They are skilled navigators, those Trumet road mosquitoes, and they know the advantage of snug harbors under hat brims and behind spreading ears. And each individual smashed by a frantic palm leaves a thousand blood relatives to attend his funeral and exact revenge after the Corsican fashion.
Now, in December, there were, of course, no mosquitoes, but the wind tore across those bare hilltops in gusts that rocked the buggy on its springs. The bayberry bushes huddled and crouched before it. The sky was covered with tumbling, flying clouds, which changed shape continually, and ripped into long, fleecy ravelings, that broke loose and pelted on until merged into the next billowy mass. The bay was gray and white, and in the spots where an occasional sunbeam broke through and struck it, flashed like a turned knife blade.
Bailey drove with one hand and held his hat on his head with the other. The road had been deeply rutted during the November rains, and now the ruts were frozen. The buggy wheels twisted and scraped as they turned in the furrows.
“What's the matter?” asked the schoolmistress, shouting so as to be heard above the flapping of the buggy curtains. “Why do you watch that wheel?”
“'Fraid of the axle,” whooped Mr. Bangs in reply. “Nut's kind of loose, for one thing, and the way the wheel wobbles I'm scart she'll come off. Call this a road!” he snorted indignantly. “More like a plowed field a consider'ble sight. Jerushy, how she blows! No wonder they raise so many deef and dumb folks in Trumet. I'd talk sign language myself if I lived here. What's the use of wastin' strength pumpin' up words when they're blowed back down your throat fast enough to choke you? Git dap, Henry! Don't you see the meetin' house steeple? We're most there, thank the goodness.”
In Trumet Center, which is not much of a center, Miss Dawes alighted from the buggy and entered a building bearing a sign with the words “Metropolitan Variety Store, Joshua Atwood, Prop'r, Groceries, Coal, Dry Goods, Insurance, Boots and Shoes, Garden Seeds, etc.” A smaller sign beneath this was lettered “Justice of the Peace,” and one below that read “Post Office.”
She emerged a moment later, followed by an elderly person in a red cardigan jacket and overalls.