ILLUSTRATIONS
| “I am so sorry—but we don’t have company, youknow” | [ Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| “Please, may I come in? I want to—tell you something” | [ 26] |
| Anna took pride and pleasure in ironing the frills andlaces of his little frocks | [ 124] |
| The echoes of the thundering knocks had hardly diedaway ... when Alice Lorraine appeared | [ 216] |
THE OTHER MILLER GIRL
CHAPTER I
ON a pleasant Saturday afternoon of the latter part of the September following the awarding of the Wadsworth prize, Mr. Langley received three distinct shocks. The first was occasioned by hearing Miss Penny referred to as an old lady, and the second, which was almost simultaneous, by learning that Anna Miller was commonly known as the ‘other Miller girl.’ The third, which was more subtle, was also more personal and might have wrought real havoc but for the slip of a yellow-haired girl who was characterised thus negatively. Her discovery of this third shock to Mr. Langley and the action she took led to such consequences that if it were the fashion now-a-days to invoke the muse, this history must needs begin by bidding the goddess sing of the uncommon sense of the other Miller girl.
The church at Farleigh was a really beautiful building. It was only an old-fashioned New England meeting-house, but its proportions were perfect for its style and its pillared portico was almost as appropriate to its structure and environment as the chaste marble columns of Greece to their more artistic and romantic setting. It stood on an height truncated by natural forces to form a plateau and was surrounded by broad lawns shaded by great English elms and a single oak-tree.
The greensward was as rich and velvety as if the season had been midsummer and the foliage of the trees as luxuriant and almost as bright, on this Saturday afternoon of the third week of September when the minister sauntered slowly up the broad walk leading to the porch. For the summer had been wet: more than one week had disproved the old saying that there will always be one fair day in the six to dry the parson’s shirt. It had been favourable for grass and trees and uncultivated vegetation but too rainy for crops. The September sunshine was, however, making amends; and as he glanced at the picturesque regularity of the fenced and walled fields of a farm across the river, Mr. Langley said to himself that the harvest would be bountiful after all if the frosts held off a bare fortnight.
The choir had been rehearsing for the morrow and the women members were lingering in the porch to chat. The minister had just noticed that Miss Garland, a member who had been away on a visit in the West for three months or more, had returned, when he heard her ask who was staying with old Miss Penny this winter. It gave him a start to hear Miss Penny called old, though she hadn’t been a young woman when he had come to the two villages straight from theological school, and if he had stopped to reckon the years he must have realised that she was well beyond three score and ten. But he did not stop, for Miss Harriman’s reply gave him another start.
“The other Miller girl,” she said in her high, strong voice which fortunately lost its nasal twang when she sang. “Rusty has gone to college, you know, even though she didn’t get the Wadsworth prize. But this girl goes to the academy and it seems to me that Miss Penny ought to have more help than she can give her outside of school hours, for she has rheumatism so bad now that she’s almost a cripple.”
Glancing up, the speaker saw that the minister was upon them and smilingly apprised him of the obvious fact that Miss Garland had got back. He shook hands with Miss Garland and with the other three, questioned the former about her summer and declared that he should call upon her next week for a fuller account. Then he turned to Miss Merriman.