Dr. Morrell came to see Annie late the next Wednesday evening.
"I didn't know you'd come back," she said. She returned to the
rocking-chair, from which she came forward to greet him, and he dropped
into an easy seat near the table piled with books and sewing.
"I didn't know it myself half an hour ago."
"Really? And is this your first visit? I must be a very interesting case."
"You are--always. How have you been?"
"I? I hardly know whether I've been at all," she answered, in mechanical
parody of his own reply. "So many other things have been of so much more
importance."
She let her eyes rest full upon his, with a sense of returning comfort and
safety in his presence, and after a deep breath of satisfaction, she asked,
"How did you leave your mother?"
"Very much better--entirely out of danger."
"It's so odd to think of any one's having a family. To me it seems the
normal condition not to have any relatives."
"Well, we can't very well dispense with mothers," said the doctor. "We have
to begin with them, at any rate."
"Oh, I don't object to them. I only wonder at them."
They fell into a cosy and mutually interesting talk about their separate
past, and he gave her glimpses of the life, simple and studious, he had
led before he went abroad. She confessed to two mistakes in which she had
mechanically persisted concerning him; one that he came from Charlestown
instead of Chelsea, and the other that his first name was Joseph instead
of James. She did not own that she had always thought it odd he should
be willing to remain in a place like Hatboro', and that it must argue a
strangely unambitious temperament in a man of his ability. She diverted the
impulse to a general satire of village life, and ended by saying that she
was getting to be a perfect villager herself.
He laughed, and then, "How has Hatboro' been getting along?" he asked.
"Simply seething with excitement," she answered. "But I should hardly know
where to begin if I tried to tell you," she added. "It seems such an age
since I saw you."
"Thank you," said the doctor.
"I didn't mean to be _quite_ so flattering; but you have certainly
marked an epoch. Really, I _don't_ know where to begin. I wish you'd
seen somebody else first--Ralph and Ellen, or Mrs. Wilmington."