Annie Kilburn | Page 7

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.
"Did you think I could be hard about such a thing as that? It was

perfectly right. O Mrs. Bolton!" She stopped laughing and began to cry;
she put away Mrs. Bolton's carefully offered hand, she threw herself
upon the bony structure of her bosom, and buried her face sobbing in
the leathery folds of her neck.
Mrs. Bolton suffered her embrace above the old dog, who fled with a
cry of rheumatic apprehension from the sweep of Miss Kilburn's skirts,
and then came back and snuffed at them in a vain effort to recall her.
"Well, go in and lay down by the stove," said Mrs. Bolton, with a
divided interest, while she beat Miss Kilburn's back with her bony palm
in sign of sympathy. But the dog went off up the lane, and stood there
by the pasture bars, barking abstractedly at intervals.

IV.
Miss Kilburn found that the house had been well aired for her coming,
but an old earthy and mouldy smell, which it took days and nights of
open doors and windows to drive out, stole back again with the first
turn of rainy weather. She had fires built on the hearths and in the
stoves, and after opening her trunks and scattering her dresses on beds
and chairs, she spent most of the first week outside of the house,
wandering about the fields and orchards to adjust herself anew to the
estranged features of the place. The house she found lower-ceiled and
smaller than she remembered it. The Boltons had kept it up very well,
and in spite of the earthy and mouldy smell, it was conscientiously
clean. There was not a speck of dust anywhere; the old yellowish-white
paint was spotless; the windows shone. But there was a sort of frigidity
in the perfect order and repair which repelled her, and she left her
things tossed about, as if to break the ice of this propriety. In several
places, within and without, she found marks of the faithful hand of
Bolton in economical patches of the woodwork; but she was not sure
that they had not been there eleven years before; and there were
darnings in the carpets and curtains, which affected her with the same
mixture of novelty and familiarity. Certain stale smells about the place
(minor smells as compared with the prevalent odour) confused her; she

could not decide whether she remembered them of old, or was
reminded of the odours she used to catch in passing the pantry on the
steamer.
Her father had never been sure that he would not return any next year
or month, and the house had always been ready to receive them. In his
study everything was as he left it. His daughter looked for signs of Mr.
Peck's occupation, but there were none; Mrs. Bolton explained that she
had put