Annie Kilburn : a Novel

by William Dean Howells

They ended by recalling Annie to mind, and Mrs. Putney said: “I suppose you haven't been to the cemetery yet? They've got it all fixed up since you went away—drives laid out, and paths cut through, and everything. A good many have put up family tombs, and they've taken away the old iron fences round the lots, and put granite curbing. They mow the grass all the time. It's a perfect garden.” Mrs. Putney was a small woman, already beginning to wrinkle. She had married a man whom Annie remembered as a mischievous little boy, with a sharp tongue and a nervous temperament; her father had always liked him when he came about the house, but Annie had lost sight of him in the years that make small boys and girls large ones, and he was at college when she went abroad. She had an impression of something unhappy in her friend's marriage.

“I think it's too much fixed up myself,” said Mrs. Gerrish. She turned suddenly to Annie: “You going to have your father fetched home?”

The other ladies started a little at the question and looked at Annie; it was not that they were shocked, but they wanted to see whether she would not be so.

“No,” she said briefly. She added, helplessly, “It wasn't his wish.”

“I should have thought he would have liked to be buried alongside of your mother,” said Mrs. Gerrish. “But the Judge always was a little peculiar. I presume you can have the name and the date put on the monument just the same.”

Annie flushed at this intimate comment and suggestion from a woman whom as a girl she had never admitted to familiarity with her, but had tolerated her because she was such a harmless simpleton, and hung upon other girls whom she liked better. The word monument cowed her, however. She was afraid they might begin to talk about the soldiers' monument. She answered hastily, and began to ask them about their families.

Mrs. Wilmington, who had no children, and Mrs. Putney, who had one, spoke of Mrs. Gerrish's large family. She had four children, and she refused the praises of her friends for them, though she celebrated them herself. “You ought to have seen the two little girls that Ellen lost, Annie,” she said. “Ellen Putney, I don't see how you ever got over that. Those two lovely, healthy children gone, and poor little Winthrop left! I always did say it was too hard.”

She had married a clerk in the principal dry-goods store, who had prospered rapidly, and was now one of the first business men of the place, and had an ambition to be a leading citizen. She believed in his fitness to deal with the questions of religion and education which he took part in, and was always quoting Mr. Gerrish. She called him Mr. Gerrish so much that other people began to call him so too. But Mrs. Putney's husband held out against it, and had the habit of returning the little man's ceremonious salutations with an easy, “Hello, Billy,” “Good morning, Billy.” It was his theory that this was good for Gerrish, who might otherwise have forgotten when everybody called him Billy. He was one of the old Putneys; and he was a lawyer by profession.

Mrs. Wilmington's husband had come to Hatboro' since Annie's long absence began; he had capital, and he had started a stocking-mill in Hatboro'. He was much older than his wife, whom he had married after a protracted widowerhood. She had one of the best houses and the most richly furnished in Hatboro'. She and Mrs. Putney saw Mrs. Gerrish at rare intervals, and in observance of some notable fact of their girlish friendship like the present.

In pursuance of the subject of children, Mrs. Gerrish said that she sometimes had a notion to offer to take Mr. Peck's little girl herself till he could get fixed somehow, but Mr. Gerrish would not let her. Mr. Gerrish said Mr. Peck had better get married himself if he wanted a step-mother for his little girl. Mr. Gerrish was peculiar about keeping a family to itself.