His anxiety in the case of your mother was very
beautiful, and if his plans seem to have miscarried, we must lay the
blame after all, on the quality of his judgment, not of his heart."
"And the girl will be twenty-one next April, I am told?"
"Her birthday is the seventeenth, exactly ten years from the date of
Jonathan's death."
CHAPTER VIII
SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL
At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate,
stopped at Bottom's Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled
account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable
hearth in the public room. The genius of personality had enabled Betsey
Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern
in Virginia had passed from the road and the one certain fact relating
to the chance comer was that he never came. By combining a store with a
public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as
the absence of guests. "Thank the Lord, I've never been one to give in
to changes!" it was her habit to exclaim.
The room was full of tobacco smoke when Abel entered, and as he paused,
in order to distinguish the row of silhouettes nodding against the ruddy
square of the fireplace, Adam Doolittle's quavering voice floated to him
from a seat in the warmest corner.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139