harm in that."

"If he had any sense he might know that he shouldn't tell anything to
father except what happens in the store," Patty insisted. "Were you
frightened out in the barn alone last night, poor dear?"

"I was too unhappy to think of fear and I was chiefly nervous about you,
all alone in the house with father."

"I didn't like it very much, myself! I buttoned my bedroom door and sat
by the window all night, shivering and bristling at the least sound.
Everybody calls me a coward, but I'm not! Courage isn't not being
frightened; it's not screeching when you are frightened. Now, what
happened at the Boyntons'?"

"Patty, Ivory's mother is the most pathetic creature I ever saw!" And
Waitstill sat up on the sofa, her long braids of hair hanging over her
shoulders, her pale face showing the traces of her heavy weeping. "I
never pitied any one so much in my whole life! To go up that long, long
lane; to come upon that dreary house hidden away in the trees; to feel
the loneliness and the silence; and then to know that she is living
there like a hermit-thrush in a forest, without a woman to care for her,
it is heart-breaking!"

"How does the house look,--dreadful?"

"No: everything is as neat as wax. She isn't 'crazy,' Patty, as we
understand the word. Her mind is beclouded somehow and it almost seems
as if the cloud might lift at any moment. She goes about like somebody
in a dream, sewing or knitting or cooking. It is only when she talks,
and you notice that her eyes really see nothing, but are looking beyond
you, that you know there is anything wrong."

"If she appears so like other people, why don't the neighbors go to see
her once in a while?"

"Callers make her unhappy, she says, and Ivory told me that he dared not
encourage any company in the house for fear of exciting her, and making
her an object of gossip, besides. He knows her ways perfectly and that
she is safe and content with her fancies when she is alone, which is
seldom, after all."

"What does she talk about?" asked Patty.

"Her husband mostly. She is expecting him to come back daily. We knew
that before, of course, but no one can realize it till they see her
setting the table for him and putting a saucer of wild strawberries by
his plate; going about the kitchen softly, like a gentle ghost."

"It gives me the shudders!" said Patty. "I couldn't bear it! If she
never sees strangers, what in the world did she make of you? How did you
begin?"