She announced the fact immediately that she couldn’t stay long to-day. For already the clever girl had, as she put it, ‘sized up’ the lady of the parsonage and knew better than to wait until later and then ‘spring’ the unwelcome fact upon her.
“O Anna, with all the long week, counting Sunday, and with a long forenoon on Saturday, it seems as if you might spare me Saturday afternoon,” protested the invalid.
“I can usually, Mrs. Langley, but you see I am going away Monday morning early and there’s my packing and ever so many things to attend to besides going over home, as I always do on Saturday, to see if ma’s clothes and pa’s ties and shirts and the boys’ are in Sunday-go-to-meeting shape,” Anna explained.
She waited for Mrs. Langley to ask where she was going or to evince some interest in her journey. Not that she was the sort of person to crave such attention. But the more she saw of Mrs. Langley, the more she realized how self-centered her life had made her. In a certain sense, it wasn’t her fault. But for the sake of Mr. Langley, his wife must somehow be induced to think of other folk or other concerns than herself, her dead baby, and the baby’s tombstone. And in that the only person she really had anything to do with was Anna it would have been encouraging to have her show some faint interest in her comings and goings when they did not lead to the parsonage, or the cemetery on yonder hillside.
But Mrs. Langley’s only concern was for her precious Saturday.
“But you will surely be back before the end of the week, Anna?” she asked.
“I suppose I shall,” said Anna soberly. “But I may not be able to come here for a fortnight. I shall have a lot of studying to do to make up my work at school.”
“Isn’t Mr. Langley on the school committee?” demanded his wife.
Wondering at her acquaintance with even so little of current history, Anna told her that he was chairman.
“Very well. Then he can arrange so that you needn’t make up the time and you can come here just the same.”