“Just been fetchin’ in th’ ice cream freezers,” he said, with his booming chuckle. “I guess I’m ’s well ’s c’n be expected, under th’ circumstances, ma’am.... An’ that r’minds me, parson, a little matter was s’ggested t’ me. In fact, I’d thought of it, some time ago. No more ’n right, in view o’ th’ facts. If you don’t mind, I’ll outline th’ idee t’ you, parson, an’ see if you approve.”
Fanny, striving to focus attention on the pointed remarks Miss Lois Daggett was making, caught occasional snatches of their conversation. Fanny had never liked Lois Daggett; but in her new rôle of minister’s wife, it was her foreordained duty to love everybody and to condole and sympathize with the parish at large. One could easily sympathize with Lois Daggett, she was thinking; what would it be like to be obliged daily to face the reflection of that mottled complexion, that long, pointed nose, with its rasped tip, that drab lifeless hair with its sharp hairpin crimp, and those small greenish eyes with no perceptible fringe of lashes? Fanny looked down from her lovely height into Miss Daggett’s upturned face and pitied her from the bottom of her heart.
“I hear your brother Jim has gone t’ Boston,” Miss Daggett was saying with a simper.
From the rear Fanny heard Judge Fulsom’s rumbling monotone, earnestly addressed to her husband:
“Not that Boston ain’t a nice town t’ live in; but we’ll have t’ enter a demurrer against her staying there f’r good. Y’ see—”
“Yes,” said Fanny, smiling at Miss Daggett. “He went several days ago.”
“H’m-m,” murmured Miss Daggett. “She’s livin’ there, ain’t she?”
“You mean Miss Orr?”
“I mean Miss Lyddy Bolton. I guess Bolton’s a good ’nough name for her.”
From the Judge, in a somewhat louder tone: