‘Wasn’t there a little room between the front and back rooms on the north side?’ asked Nan, a little hesitatingly, while Rita gave her a pinch of excitement.
‘I don’no’ as there was,’ said Mr. Briggs.
Jane Peebles spoke up:
‘I believe there was some sort of a room there. I remember once Maria said she kept that north door a leetle crack open in fly-time, and it did seem to rid the little room of flies considerble.’
‘I don’t recollect,’ said Mr. Briggs, ‘as there was a door on the north side, but I aint sure; them pine-trees was so dark and the rose-bushes so thick; I can’t remember as I’ve been round there lately; it didn’t seem any special place to go to.’
‘Well!’ said Jane Peebles, decisively, ‘I guess there aint nobody in Titusville that knows any more about that house than I do, unless it’s the Keyses themselves; and I know there was a little room.’
‘Now Jane!’ said Widder Luke (Jane wilted a little); ‘if there was a little room there, where was the door to it—on the inside I mean? I guess I haven’t been to the Baptist Sewing Circle for forty years for nothin’, and the Keyses have had it once every year, in January; and I venture to say I’ve set and sewed in that front room scores of times, and the only door in the front room was the door into the china-closet, except, of course, the door into the hall-way; and as to the dinin’-room, as they called it’ (Si Briggs was a widower, and this was a subtle compliment to him), ‘there wan’t no door at all on that side of the room, just blank wall, with them black pictures of the family done in ink, under glass. I always was struck with that one of Jonathan Keys, it did look exactly like Hannah—just so set and stubborn about the mouth. Poor Hannah, she has had her day though. I have often heard my mother say that Hannah was the prettiest girl in Titusville when she was sixteen, though she was always that stiff. She was sixteen just before she went down to Salem.’
Here was an opening, and Nan plunged in.
‘I heard something about that: didn’t she meet an old sea-captain down there and come near marrying him?’
‘I don’t know how near she came to marrying him, I know he never came to Titusville. Now I wonder how you ever came to hear that old story; it seems a hundred years ago since my mother told me.’