The Fairfields spend a part of their time in Ridgemont, and the elegant little phaeton and the doctor's buggy often pass each other on the street; the occupants exchange greetings, and that is all.
Miss Fairfield is Miss Fairfield still. Always elegant and artistic in her dress, she is not quite the same, however. The porcelain tints have faded, and there is a sharpness about the delicate features, and a peevishness about the small pink lips. She is devoted to art. She paints industriously, and with fair result. Her tea-sets are much sought after, and she "spends her winters in Boston."
THIRZA.
She stood by the window, looking out over the dreary landscape, a woman of some twenty-five years, with an earnest, even melancholy face, in which the wistful brown eyes were undoubtedly the redeeming feature. Jones' Hill, taken at its best, in full parade uniform of summer green, was not renowned for beauty or picturesqueness, and now, in fatigue dress of sodden brown stubble, with occasional patches of dingy white in ditches and hollows and along the edges of the dark pine woods, was even less calculated to inspire the beholder with enthusiasm. Still, that would hardly account for the shadow which rested upon Thirza Bradford's face. She ought, in fact, to have worn a cheerful countenance. One week before she had been a poor girl, dependent upon the labor of her hand for her daily bread; to-day she was sole possessor of a farm of considerable extent, the comfortable old house at one of whose windows she was now standing, and all that house's contents.
One week before she had been called to the bed-side of her aunt, Abigail Leavitt. She had arrived none too soon, for the stern, sad old woman had received her summons, and before another morning dawned had passed away.
To her great surprise, Thirza found that her aunt had left her sole heiress of all she had possessed. Why she should have been surprised would be difficult to explain. Aunt Abigail's two boys had gone to the war and never returned, her husband had been dead for many years, and Thirza was her only sister's only child, and sole surviving relative. Nothing, therefore, was more natural than this event, but Thirza had simply never thought of it. She had listened, half in wonder, half in indifference, to the reading of the will, and had accepted mechanically the grudgingly tendered congratulations of the assembled farmers and their wives.
She had been supported in arranging and carrying out the gloomy details of the funeral by Jane Withers, a spinster of a type peculiar to New England; one of those persons who, scorning to demean themselves by "hiring out," go about, nevertheless, from family to family, rendering reluctant service, "just to accommodate" (accepting a weekly stipend in the same spirit of accommodation, it is to be supposed). With this person's assistance, Thirza had prepared the repast to which, according to custom, the mourners from a distance were invited on their return from the burying-ground. Aunt Abigail had been stricken down at the close of a Saturday's baking, leaving a goodly array upon the pantry shelves, a fact upon which Jane congratulated herself without any attempt at concealment, observing, in fact, that the melancholy event "couldn't have happened handier." In vain had Thirza protested—Jane was inflexible—and she had looked on with silent horror, while the funeral guests devoured with great relish the pies and ginger-bread which the dead woman's hand had prepared.
"Mis' Leavitt were a master hand at pie-crust," remarked one toothless dame, mumbling at the flaky paste, "a master hand at pie-crust, but she never were much at bread!" whereupon the whole feminine conclave launched out into a prolonged and noisy discussion of the relative merits of salt-risin's, milk-emptin's, and potato yeast.