Miss Wilcox, comprehending her expression rather than the words, stood dumb for an instant in half-incredulous relief. The thing was almost too good to be true, coming to pass with this uncanny suddenness. Eighty-five dollars a month and the hopeless old place off her hands at last! All the dreams which even in the act of dreaming she had stigmatized as rank folly, revisited her in flashing procession: having her hair “permanented,” going to Atlantic City, buying a fur coat—how often had she spent that rainbow gold! This time it was real. There would be only the pleasing care of letting it accumulate for a while. She awoke to new apprehensions. “I—I suppose there will be things to do? Changes? I mean you will want——?”
Mrs. Shields applied the decorative smile to her face. “Oh, my, no, I don’t want nothin’. The house is just swell, and anyways I never was one to keep running to people for new wallpaper, and ever’ little thing that needs fixing. I like to keep things up my own self. I’m awful easy to get along with,” she assured her prospective landlady eagerly. Miss Martha, who had been recalling terrifying tales she had had from more than one earnest friend about the misdemeanours and the tyrannous exactions of the average tenant, breathed freely again. It began to seem a leisurely, congenial, and singularly profitable occupation to rent houses as the patient waiting and many disappointments of the last six months retired to the background of her memories. Mrs. Shields, meanwhile, fluttered up and down the garden, already assuming innocent airs of proprietorship.
“You gotta tell me where at you get a bird bath like that, ’cause that’s what I’m gonna have the first thing!” she proclaimed with enthusiasm. “Never you mind! It’ll all be took good care of, and I won’t change a thing. It’s so nice the way it is, all clean and quiet and kinda restful. I got the same old-style notions as you. I’m crazy about having a real refined home.”
Miss Wilcox, not for the first time, wished that the questionably adaptable young man from the real-estate office were there; he would know what to say. “You’re a stranger here?” she ventured at length.
“Oh, I’ve lived lotsa places,” said the other, smiling blankly. “Is that as far as the yard goes to, that fence, with the vines on? My, they grow thick, don’t they?”
They did indeed, forming a broad, tangled breastwork of honeysuckle and rambler roses valued by Miss Martha for being comely to the view in blooming time and all the year round an impregnable defence against boys and other animals. Mrs. Shields, craning slightly to peer over it, inspected the adjoining territory with her naïvely open curiosity; she gave an exclamation. “For Pete’s sake! Didn’t you tell me that’s where the preacher lives?”
“Doctor Gowdy. Yes,” said Miss Martha, a little uncomfortable.
“Keeps it lovely, don’t he? Just like this side!”
Miss Martha perceived that this was to be taken in an ironic sense; making every allowance for the other’s idiosyncrasies of speech and manner, it was impossible that she could be in earnest. Even the most stalwart members of his congregation had been overheard to express themselves unfavourably about Doctor Gowdy’s yard. “Well—a clergyman, you know—he’s so busy. Besides, one really ought not to expect him—— And Mrs. Gowdy—— They have quite a family. It’s almost impossible for her to keep a servant. Even coloured——”
“They got a coon in the kitchen now. I can see her,” said Mrs. Shields.