"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."
They came up in sight of the old square house, standing back a good
distance from the road, with a broad sweep of grass sloping down before it
into a little valley, and rising again to the wall fencing the grounds from
the street. The wall was overhung there by a company of magnificent elms,
which turned and formed one side of the avenue leading to the house. Their
tops met and mixed somewhat incongruously with those of the stiff dark
maples which more densely shaded the other side of the lane.
Bolton drove into their gloom, and then out into the wide sunny space at
the side of the house where Miss Kilburn had alighted so often with her
father. Bolton's dog, grown now so very old as to be weak-minded, barked
crazily at his master, and then, recognising him, broke into an imbecile
whimper, and went back and coiled his rheumatism up in the sun on a warm
stone before the door. Mrs. Bolton had to step over him as she came out,
formally supporting her right elbow with her left hand as she offered the
other in greeting to Miss Kilburn, with a look of question at her husband.
Miss Kilburn intercepted the look, and began to laugh.
All was unchanged, and all so strange; it seemed as if her father must both
get down with her from the carriage and come to meet her from the house.
Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the
patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds
underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and
blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and
the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses and trees; the woodshed
stretching with its low board arches to the barn, and the milk-pans tilted
to sun against the underpinning of the L, and Mrs. Bolton's pot plants in
the kitchen window.