The two small white houses stood close together, with their little gardens behind them. The road was just in front, and led down to a stone bridge which crossed the river to the busy manufacturing village beyond. The air was fresh and cool at that early hour, the wind had changed after a season of dry, hot weather; it was just the morning for a good bit of gossip with a neighbor, but summer was almost done, and the friends were not reconciled. Their respective acquaintances had grown tired of hearing the story of the quarrel, and the novelty of such a pleasing excitement had long been over. Mrs. Connelly was thumping away at a handful of belated ironing, and Mrs. Dunleavy, estranged and solitary, sighed as she listened to the iron. She was sociable by nature, and she had an impulse to go in and sit down as she used at the end of the ironing table.
"Wisha, the poor thing is mad at me yet, I know that from the sounds of her iron; 't was a shame for her to go picking a quarrel with the likes of me," and Mrs. Dunleavy sighed heavily and stepped down into her flower-plot to pull the distressed foxgloves back into their places inside the fence. The seed had been sent her from the old country, and this was the first year they had come into full bloom. She had been hoping that the sight of them would melt Mrs. Connelly's heart into some expression of friendliness, since they had come from adjoining parishes in old County Kerry. The goat lifted his head, and gazed at his enemy with mild interest; he was pasturing now by the roadside, and the foxgloves had proved bitter in his mouth.
Mrs. Dunleavy stood looking at him over the fence, glad of even a goat's company.
"Go 'long there; see that fine little tuft ahead now," she advised him, forgetful of his depredations. "Oh, to think I 've nobody to spake to, the day!"
At that moment a woman came in sight round the turn of the road. She was a stranger, a fellow country-woman, and she carried a large newspaper bundle and a heavy handbag. Mrs. Dunleavy stepped out of the flower-bed toward the gate, and waited there until the stranger came up and stopped to ask a question.
"Ann Bogan don't live here, do she?"
"She don't," answered the mistress of the house, with dignity.
"I t'ought she did n't; you don't know where she lives, do you?"
"I don't," said Mrs. Dunleavy.
"I don't know ayther; niver mind, I 'll find her; 't is a fine day, ma'am."