‘Sakes alive! if you really want to know particular, I shouldn’t make any bones myself about asking Maria. I should like her to know I don’t bear any grudge against ’em, though we did have a fallin’-out about that jam, Hannah and me, come ten years ago next August. I shouldn’t mind showin’ I had friendly interest in them—now, they’re in trouble.’
The ruins of the old house looked small and insignificant in the broad sunshine. The poplars were shrivelled by the fire, and the thicket of roses was blackened and trampled; it was as dehumanized as if no one had lived there for a century.
Mr. Briggs came back to the wagon and said, briskly:
Rita and Nan hesitated; then Rita said:
‘Do you suppose Miss Maria would like to see us? We met her niece just before she sailed for Europe. She asked us to call and give her aunts some messages, but if you think they are too much broken down by the fire and all—’
‘Oh, no; it will do Maria good—it’s no use cryin’ over spilt milk, or burnt houses for that matter, and I guess you could look at Hannah too; she can’t speak, I hear it said, but she lies right in the bed off of the livin’-room, and most everybody goes in to look at her.’
‘The theatre is nowhere,’ whispered Nan to Rita; ‘but isn’t it ghastly!’
Miss Maria sat in state in the front room at the Fifes’; her black dress, borrowed from a neighbor, was large for even her plump figure, and it had a tendency to make her look as if she had been ill for a long time and had grown thin; her face was pale with the recent excitement, and wore the air of one who was waiting; she sat quite erect in the rocking-chair, with her plump hands folded on her lap; there was an appealing look in her eyes—she missed Hannah; there was no one to give her a pattern for thought or act. Neighbors passed in and out, and there was something so passive in Maria’s look that they talked of her freely as she as if she were not there. There was plenty of sympathy for her, but it was swept out of sight by the tide of curiosity and detail,—how the house had caught fire; who had seen it first; how Hannah slept so heavily she could not be roused for a long time; how it happened that the well was so low; how the pump-handle broke; how the men tried to save something, but how little had been got out! and then, ‘how bad Hannah looks,’ and how old Simeon Bissell lived ten years after his stroke, and Hannah was younger than he, and the Keyses were a long-lived family.
They passed in and out of Hannah’s room, Lucinda Fife asking each new-comer to ‘just step in and look at Hannah!’