“Now, I’m real sorry you feel that way,” sympathized Mrs. Daggett, “but I don’t know as I blame you, the way folks talk. You’d think they’d have forgot all about it by now, wouldn’t you? But land! it does seem as if bad thoughts and mean thoughts, and like that, was possessed to fasten right on to folks; and you can’t seem to shake ’em off, no more than them spiteful little stick-tights that get all over your clo’es.... This room right next belonged to their baby. Let me see; she must have been about three and a half or four years old when they took her away. See, there’s a door in between, so Mrs. Bolton could get to her quick in the night. I used to be that way, too, with my children.... You know we lost our two little girls that same winter, three and five, they were. But I know I wanted ’em right where I could hear ’em if they asked for a drink of water, or like that, in the night. Folks has a great notion now-a-days of putting their babies off by themselves and letting them cry it out, as they say. But I couldn’t ever do that; and Mrs. Andrew Bolton she wa’n’t that kind of a parent, either— I don’t know as they ought to be called mothers. No, she was more like me—liked to tuck the blankets around her baby in the middle of th’ night an’ pat her down all warm and nice. I’ve often wondered what became of that poor little orphan child. We never heard. Like enough she died. I shouldn’t wonder.”
And Mrs. Daggett wiped the ready tears from her eyes.
“But I guess you’ll think I’m a real old Aunty Doleful, going on this way,” she made haste to add.
“There’s plenty of folks in Brookville as ’ll tell you how stuck-up an’ stylish Mrs. Andrew Bolton was, always dressed in silk of an afternoon and driving out with a two-horse team, an’ keeping two hired girls constant, besides a man to work in her flower garden and another for the barn. But of course she supposed they were really rich and could afford it. He never let on to her, after things begun to go to pieces; and folks blamed her for it, afterwards. Her heart was weak, and he knew it, all along. And then I suppose he thought mebbe things would take a turn.... Yes; the paper in this room was white with little wreaths of pink roses tied up with blue ribbons all over it. ’Twas furnished up real pretty with white furniture, and there was ruffled muslin curtains with dots on ’em at the windows and over the bed; Mrs. Andrew Bolton certainly did fix things up pretty, and to think you’re going to have it just the same way. Well, I will say you couldn’t do any better.... But, land! if there isn’t the sun going down behind the hill, and me way out here, with Henry’s supper to get, and Dolly champing his bit impatient. There’s one lucky thing, though; he’ll travel good, going towards home; he won’t stop to get his tail over the lines, neither.”
An hour later, when the long summer twilight was deepening into gloom, Jim Dodge crossed the empty library and paused at the open door of the room beyond. The somber light from the two tall windows fell upon the figure of the girl. She was sitting before Andrew Bolton’s desk, her head upon her folded arms. Something in the spiritless droop of her shoulders and the soft dishevelment of her fair hair suggested weariness—sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a muffled sob escaped the quiet figure. He turned noiselessly and went away, sorry and ashamed, because unwittingly he had stumbled upon the clew he had long been seeking.
Chapter XI.
“Beside this stone wall I want flowers,” Lydia was saying to her landscape-gardener, as she persisted in calling Jim Dodge. “Hollyhocks and foxgloves and pinies—I shall never say peony in Brookville—and pansies, sweet williams, lads’ love, iris and sweetbrier. Mrs. Daggett has promised to give me some roots.”
He avoided her eyes as she faced him in the bright glow of the morning sunlight.
“Very well, Miss Orr,” he said, with cold respect. “You want a border here about four feet wide, filled with old-fashioned perennials.”
He had been diligent in his study of the books she had supplied him with.