The gypsy's words came back unbidden as I rose by the embers of the fire. "A long journey," I repeated; "and why not?"
IV
AN UNEXPECTED LETTER
D
uring the winter a great piece of news stirred Grassy Ford, and in spite of the snow-drifts on our walks and porches furnished an excuse for a dozen calls that otherwise would never have been made so soon. Old Mrs. Luton was discovered in a state of apoplexy on our steps, but on being brought in and divested of her husband's coon-skin cap, a plush collar, a scarf, a shawl, a knitted jacket, and a newspaper folded across her chest, recovered her breath and told her story. Mrs. Neal, so Mrs. Luton said, had been heard to say, according to Mrs. Withers, who had it from Mrs. Lowell, who lived next door to Mrs. Bell—who, as the world knows, called more often than anybody else at the Neal farm-house, feeling a pity for the lonely woman there, as who did not?—Mrs. Neal had been heard to say, what Mrs. Luton would not have repeated for the world to any one but her dear Miss Primrose, who could be trusted implicitly, as she knew, and she had said it in the most casual way—Mrs. Neal, that is—but secretly very well pleased, though, Heaven knows, she, Mrs. Luton—
"Won't you have some coffee?" asked Letitia, for the breakfast was not yet cold.
"Yes, thank you, I will, for I'm as cold as can be," exclaimed her visitor, laughing hysterically, and she was profuse in her praise of Letitia's beverage, and inquired the brand. Her manner of sipping it as she sat in an easy-chair before the fire did away with all necessity for a spoon, but was a little trying to a delicate sense of hearing like Letitia's, and was responsible beside for what was wellnigh a disastrous deluge when in the midst of a copious ingurgitation she suddenly remembered what she had come to tell:
"Ffff—Peggy Neal's a-living in New York!" she splashed, her eyes popping. It would be impossible to relate the story as Mrs. Luton told it, for its ramifications and parentheses involved the history of Grassy Ford and the manifold relationships of its inhabitants, past and present, to say nothing of the time to come, for in speculations Mrs. Luton was profound.