I spoke the last words in a louder tone, and, bowing low, I passed out of the chamber.
Maud Wilder Goodwin.
XVIII
DR. PENNINGTON’S COUNTRY PRACTICE.
NEXT to her husband and her children there was nothing that Mrs. Graham liked better than worrying herself. To a degree far beyond that attained by any other woman in Marston, she enjoyed “the luxury of woe,” and during the last few days she had been indulging in it without stint. For during those days there had been five burglaries in that town, and the little place, ordinarily no more excited than most summer resorts, had become almost hysterical. First of all the post-office had been robbed, and then, as though that robbery had been merely by way of practice, the thieves on the next night had broken into a private house. Other robberies had followed in quick and defiant succession, and within twenty-four hours the little red brick railroad-station on Orawaupum Street had been broken into, and the money in the safe stolen. Then indeed there was excitement, for, as in all small towns not too remote from large cities, the station was the real centre of town life, and its misfortune was looked on almost as a sacrilege.
Even the summer residents seemed to consider it as such, and when, as was the custom at Marston, the ladies drove down to the station in the late afternoon to meet their husbands on their return from the city, not one but looked at the little red building as though she expected to hear it cry out against the profanation.