"Mr. Daragh has something from her, too." Emma Ellis stood behind the Irishman's chair, her pale eyes lapping up the inscription.
"No!" said Mrs. Hills, advancing with interest, frank and unashamed. "You don't say! Well, he has! Sure's you're a foot high! Well, now, that beats me!"
Emma Ellis tucked in her lips in a way she had before making a certain type of remark. "It is rather strange.... They were out walking in the evening, and in the morning she left, precipitately."
"'Tis kinder queer," Mrs. Hills clucked. "Couldn't have quarreled or anything—never paid enough attention to each other for that."
"Oh," said Emma Ellis in a hushed voice, "don't you think Miss Vail has always devoted a great deal of attention to Mr. Daragh?"
"Well, Jane's a great one to make up to folks and be friendly; always was, as a child. I can remember her, four years old, after her folks died and she came to live with Miss Lydia. Wasn't afraid of anything or anybody, ever. Used to slip out and run off down Main Street after a peddler or a gypsy or anybody she took a fancy to. But—" she came back into the present—"Mr. Daragh's been kinder queer these last two, three days. But then, far's that goes, he's always queer. Oddest mortal I ever met up with in all my born days. Odder'n Adam's off ox."
"If it is odd," said the Settlement worker, dull color flooding her sallow skin, "for a man to turn his back on greed and gain and devote his life to altruism——"
"Now, now," said the boarding-house keeper, pacifically, "you've no call to take me up like that. Land knows I set a great store by Mr. Daragh, if he is Irish as the pigs. Never had a human being under my roof that was easier to suit and made less fuss, but he's queer and I'd say it on my dying bed!"
The other woman stood looking down at Jane Vail's pretty letter which managed, in spite of the plain, creamy envelope and the many alien hands through which it had passed, to retain a startling individuality, and she spoke in the little smothered voice which was her proclamation of intense feeling. "If—she—with the life she leads—has—has disturbed Mr. Daragh——"
"Now, then, you look here," said the Vermont villager with sudden sharpness, "I guess her life is about as important as anybody else's I might name! I guess if Mr. Daragh's 'disturbed,' as you call it, it's no worse for him than it's been for others. My land, Jane Vail could of had her choice of the town, where she comes from. There's four wanted her, to my certain knowledge, and they say Martin Wetherby (Wetherby Ridge is named for his family—they go back to Revolutionary days) never will get over it. And I guess that Mr. Harrison that rolls up here in taxis and limousines is sitting up and taking notice, sure's gun's iron! And if Mr. Michael Daragh——"