“What, not a thing?” Mrs. Seabury exclaimed on a high note of astonishment. “That old rookery! Well, of course, I don’t mean it’s not a lovely house,” she amended hastily. “Only naturally, you’ve never spent any more on it than you could help, I suppose. It’s weird her not wanting some repairs. She can’t be much of a housekeeper. Maybe that’s just as well, though. She won’t mind living next door to the Gowdys. Has she ever said anything about them?”
“I haven’t inquired,” said Miss Martha, stiffening again.
“Oh, well, she probably will later on,” Mrs. Seabury prophesied blithely; she was not a member of Saint Luke’s congregation. “Unless she’s a saint, she’ll have trouble over the ashes or the garbage or the children or something.”
Mrs. Shields, however, was apparently bent on justifying her claim to being “awful easy to get along with,” if that phrase connotes living quietly and seeking no one’s acquaintance. She went about domestic duties with an extraordinary zest, cooked, cleaned, ran up and down stairs endlessly; and spent hours in the garden applying her patently unskilled energies to weeding and trimming it, or motionless in some coign of vantage, watching the birds. Except for these robins and jays and an occasional squirrel, she had no visitors, and defeated expectations by never publicly falling foul of the Gowdy ash-heap, the Gowdy garbage, or the Gowdy children, whatever her private attitude toward them. Mrs. Gowdy, with characteristic sweet thoughtfulness—everybody acclaimed her as the ideal wife for a clergyman—introduced herself over the hedge after a few days with a smiling word or two about the other’s courage in coming to live alongside such a houseful. “We used to be afraid our youngsters were a good deal of a trial to Miss Wilcox.”
“I don’t mind ’em, only when it sounds like somebody was getting hurt,” said Mrs. Shields, whereat the experienced mother began to laugh.
“Oh, children are always getting hurt, you know. Mine seem to be made of steel and india-rubber. They stand everything. Luella—that’s the maid I have now—worries over them more than I do! She’s so good with them, and perfectly devoted to Wilbur, especially.”
Mrs. Shields looked at her uncertainly.
“Well, Luella ain’t always on the job, is she? I don’t see how she can be.”
“Oh, yes, she’s very efficient. I hardly ever give an order. Sometimes coloured people are like that, wonderful with children and about the housework too.” With other agreeable generalities, she moved away; and Mrs. Shields, after a speculative stare at the retreating back, shook her own overdressed head soberly, and moved away, too.
It happened that she did not encounter Doctor Gowdy until some time later, on an occasion which turned out to be more or less momentous. Pottering about among the flower beds, she heard without heeding a piping excitement in the other back yard, and only looked across at last when a heavier voice was added to the children’s. “Now, we must have a coop, you know, boys. They have to be kept in a coop,” Doctor Gowdy was expounding. “Let’s see! What shall we do? Oh, I’ll tell you! There’s that old peach crate over there; you get that, Robbie, and I shouldn’t wonder if Tom could nail some strips up the sides. Everybody must help, that’s the only way to get along——” he kept on fluently in his trained, carrying voice, while the boys circled about, squabbling over his directions. Then, as he caught Mrs. Shields’s eye, smiled with a gesture toward the basket in his hands.