“But I don't understand,” she said. “What child are you talking about?”
“Mr. Peck's.”
“Was he married?” she asked, with displeasure, she did not know why.
“Well, yes, he had been,” answered Bolton. “But she'd be'n in the asylum ever since the child was born.”
“Oh,” said Miss Kilburn, with relief; and she fell back upon the seat from which she had started forward.
Bolton might easily have taken her tone for that of disgust. He faced round upon her once more. “It was kind of queer, his havin' the child with him, an' takin' most the care of her himself; and so, as I say, Mis' Bolton and me we took him in, as much to stop folks' mouths as anything, till they got kinder used to it. But we didn't take him into your part, as I say; and as I say, I'm willin' to pay you whatever you say for the use of the old Judge's study. I presume that part of it was a libbutty.”
“It was all perfectly right, Mr. Bolton,” said Miss Kilburn.
“His wife died anyway, more than a year ago,” said Bolton, as if the fact completed his atonement to Miss Kilburn, “Git ep! I told him from the start that it had got to be a temporary thing, an' 't I only took him till he could git settled somehow. I guess he means to go to house-keepin', if he can git the right kind of a house-keeper; he wants an old one. If it was a young one, I guess he wouldn't have any great trouble, if he went about it the right way.” Bolton's sarcasm was merely a race sarcasm. He was a very mild man, and his thick-growing eyelashes softened and shadowed his grey eyes, and gave his lean face pathos.
“You could have let him stay till he had found a suitable place,” said Miss Kilburn.
“Oh, I wa'n't goin' to do that,” said Bolton. “But I'm 'bliged to you just the same.”