Then, as she gradually grew quiet, dulled by fatigue and the heat of the room, her head sliding down on her arm in heavy sleep, they drew sighs of relief and their voices arose in chat about the happenings of the last few days and the natural question as to what was to become of Bird.
“Hasn’t she got any folks either side?” asked a young woman who had but recently moved into Laurelville, and did not yet know the comings and goings and kith and kin of her neighbours.
“Only her father’s half-brother,” spoke up the rosy woman, Mrs. Lane by name, “and he lives way down in New York City. Joshua wrote him ten days back when Mr. More took sick; but he never answered, so two days ago he wrote again. Joshua says he guesses maybe they’ve moved, for folks are awful restless down in York, and shift around as often as every few years—says he reckons you have to if you’re anybody, cause there’s sudden fashions in buildings down there as well as in clothes, and they get made over frequent to keep in style, likewise the streets.
“Yes, I wouldn’t even have known his name if Mis’ More hadn’t told me about him before she died, two years back. You see,” turning to Mrs. Tilby, the newcomer, “she was Sarah Turner, born and raised over at the Milltown, and, being an only child, was give her own head a good deal. I must allow she was pretty, and had those big black eyes that you can’t guess what they’re seeing, same as Bird’s got. Her folks felt dreadful bad when she wouldn’t take up with any of the solid fellers who would have taken pride in the farm and mill business, but married young O’More that nobody knew a speck about, except that he claimed to be an artist, but folks didn’t buy his pictures, and I don’t wonder, for there’s some up attic now, and you have to stand way back to even see a shape to ’em, being not near as clear as those that come extry with the Sunday papers.
“No, Mis’ Slocum, I don’t take Sunday papers, on ’count of Joshua’s aunt’s husband being deacon, and not desirin’ to call trouble on the family; but if he wasn’t I would, for besides them pictures an’ readin’ an’ advertisements, that wonderful they’d raise curiosity in froze dough, there’s your money’s worth o’ paper for carpet linin’ or kindlin’ over and above.
“Where was I? Mis’ Slocum, you shouldn’t ’a’ set me off the track, so’s I’m not giving Mis’ Tilby a clear idee of how it was.
“Ah, yes, I remember,—his wall pictures not sellin’, he got a job to paint posies and neat little views the size of your hand on the inside covers of sewin’-machine boxes and trays and work-tables over in Northboro. It paid first-rate, I guess, for a spell, so after the old folks died, they sold out the farm and mill and moved into town.
“When Bird here was five years old or so, O’More had a knock-down, for they got some kind of a machine in the factory that could do pictures quicker than he, and at the same time the folks that had bought the place on a mortgage caved in, and, between havin’ no sense themselves and lawyers, most everything was ate up and mixed so’s Mis’ O’More lost the mill and all, and they moved out here.
“Mis’ More—folks round here never could swaller the O’, it being the sign, as it were, of a furrin race and religion—just drew in like a turtle in a shell, losin’ hope altogether, and never went any place. And as for Terence,—that was him, Bird always callin’ him ‘Terry’ like he was her brother,—I suppose he was always what bustlin’ folks like us would call slack; but after he came here, he seemed to grow happy in spite of the fact that only one shop, the work-box and the picture-frame one, gave him jobs. He painted out his flowers as careful, no two pictures alike, and when I said, ‘Why don’t you do one and copy it—it would be less trouble,’ he looked up sort of reproachful and said, ‘It makes me happy to do good work, Mrs. Lane; a machine can do the other kind.’