At the foot of the hill the road widened into a grassy street,
on both sides of which, under the elms and maples, were the
community houses, big and substantial, but gauntly plain;
their yellow paint, flaking and peeling here and there,
shone clean and fresh in the sparkle of morning. Except for a black
cat whose fur glistened like jet, dozing on a white doorstep,
the settlement, steeped in sunshine, showed no sign of life.
There was a strange remoteness from time about the place;
a sort of emptiness, and a silence that silenced even Athalia.
"Where IS everybody?" she said, in a lowered voice; as she spoke,
a child in a blue apron came from an open doorway and tugged a basket
across the street.
"Are there children here?" Lewis asked, surprised; and their
guide said, sadly:
"Not as many as there ought to be. The new school laws have made
a great difference. We've only got two. Folks used to send 'em
to us to bring up; oftentimes they stayed on after they were of age.
Sister Lydia came that way. Well, well, she tired of us, Lydy did,
poor girl! She went back into the world twenty years ago, now.
And Sister Jane, she was a bound-out child, too," he rambled on;
"she came here when she was six; she's seventy now."
"What!" Lewis exclaimed; "has she never known anything but--this?"
His shocked tone did not disturb the old man.
"Want to see my herb-house?" he said. "Guess you'll find
some of the sisters in the sorting-room.
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