“And you such a reader, too. How many magazines do you take? I’d like some of your old magazines while I’m laid up.”
“Mr. Brush will bring you a big bundle. But I will go to the library now, for he may not wish to bring them to-night.”
The school library was kept at the house of one of the school trustees; the errand gave Miss Affy another quarter of a mile to walk, and it also gave her the opportunity of a call upon Nettie Evans, whose small home was next door to the school-library. Cephas Brush had told her that she knew how to kill more birds with one stone than any woman he knew.
She walked past the syringa bushes of the school trustee’s front yard, and knocked on the front door with the big brass knocker; there was no response excepting the sound of rubbing and splash of water that came through the open kitchen window. Miss Affy knocked the second time with more determined fingers. It was a pity to take Mrs. Finch from her washing, but it would be more of a pity to let that old man toss in pain and groan for a book to read. As she gave the second knock she wondered if his lamp were safely arranged, and if the reading by lamp-light did not injure his eyes; she would look for a book with good type.
The kitchen door was quickly opened, a woman with rolled-up sleeves and dripping, par-boiled fingers called out pleasantly: “Why don’t you come to this door?”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Finch,” said Miss Affy, walking past another syringa bush, “I came to the Circulating Library.”
“The Circulating Library is where I am. I keep it in the kitchen, because I cannot circulate about my work to attend it,” replied Mrs. Finch, extending a hospitable wet hand; “You see I’m late to-day; usually my washing is all out at eleven o’clock. But his folks came to dinner, three of them, unexpectedly—Monday, too, and I had to spring around and cook a dinner; the Sunday left-overs wouldn’t do. They didn’t leave the house until half-past two, so I had to leave the dinner dishes, piled them up in the shed, under a pan, and put on my boiler again. It don’t often happen, and I put a good face on it.”
“You turn a very cheery face toward life, Mrs. Finch.”
“Well, I try to. It’s all I’ve got to give anyway;” Mrs. Finch replied, removing the cover from the boiler and poking at the clothes with a long clothes-stick; the steam rolled out the door and windows; as the room was cleared, Miss Affy discovered a high mahogany bureau with brass rings, the top of which was covered with books in neat piles.
“You are welcome to look at the books and take one. I wish you would sit down, Miss Affy, I can talk while I work. I wish I might stay and wash the dishes for you.”