"It is perfectly natural," he said to himself, as he went down to his lonely tea. "Perfectly so, and I am glad she has gone. But——"
The terrible disease whose presence had sent such a thrill of horror through the quiet little town had been raging for two weeks, and though the inevitable rebound from the first pressure of dread was making itself universally felt, as a topic of conversation it had lost none of its charms.
On a wild, wet afternoon, Lilly O'Connell sat in the stuffy work-room sacred to the mysteries of making and trying on the wonderful productions of Miss Bullins's scissors and needle. She was sewing the folds upon a dress of cheap mourning, while Miss Bullins sat opposite with lap-board and scissors, her nimble tongue outrunning the latter by long odds.
"What's friends for," she was saying, "if they aint goin' to stand by you when the pinch comes? Folks that's got husbands and lovers and friends a plenty don't realize their blessin's. As for Florence Fairfield, it makes me ashamed of bein' a woman—the way that girl did! They say she wouldn't even see Roger Horton to bid him good-by. I never heard the like!"
Lilly turned her head toward the window, perhaps because the dress in her hands was black, and the light dull.
"They say he's workin' himself to death for all them poor people, and he aint got nobody—no sister nor mother—to nurse him up when he comes home all tuckered out; though Nancy Swift thinks a sight of him, and she'll do her duty by him, I make no doubt. He's just like his father, and he was a good man. Florence Fairfield don't deserve her privileges, I'm afeard."
The street door opened, and with a gust of cold wind entered Widow Gatchell, the village "Sairey Gamp." She was an elderly woman, tall, stiff and dry as a last year's mullein-stalk. Her dark, wrinkled face was fixed and inexpressive, but the small black eyes were full of life. She was clothed in rusty garments, and carried a seedy carpet-sack in her hand.
"How d'ye do?" she said, in a dry voice, dropping on to the edge of a chair. "I jest come in to tell ye, if ye was drove, 'taint no matter about my bunnit. I sha'n't want it right away."
"Why not?" said Miss Bullins, looking up.