A girl came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of the one of North Dormer, and on the doorstep.
It was the of a June afternoon. The sky a rain of on the of the village, and on the and it. A little wind moved among the white clouds on the of the hills, their across the and the road that takes the name of when it through North Dormer. The place high and in the open, and the of the more protected New England villages. The of weeping-willows about the pond, and the Norway in of the Hatchard gate, almost the only lawyer Royall's house and the point where, at the other end of the village, the road above the church and skirts the black the cemetery.
The little June wind, the street, the of the Hatchard spruces, the of a man just under them, and it clean across the road into the duck-pond.
As he ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's noticed that he was a stranger, that he city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the and careless laugh at such mishaps.
Her a little, and the that sometimes came over her when she saw people with her into the house and to look for the key that she she had already put into her pocket. A narrow with a over it on the passage wall, and she looked at her reflection, for the thousandth time that she had like Annabel Balch, the girl who sometimes came from Springfield to a week with old Miss Hatchard, the over her small face, and out again into the sunshine.
“How I everything!” she murmured.
The man had passed through the Hatchard gate, and she had the to herself. North Dormer is at all times an empty place, and at three o'clock on a June its able-bodied men are off in the or woods, and the indoors, in drudgery.
The girl walked along, her key on a finger, and looking about her with the attention produced by the presence of a in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to people from other parts of the world? She herself had there since the age of five, and had long it to be a place of some importance. But about a year before, Mr. Miles, the new Episcopal at Hepburn, who over every other Sunday—when the were not up by hauling—to a service in the North Dormer church, had proposed, in a fit of zeal, to take the people to Nettleton to an lecture on the Holy Land; and the dozen girls and boys who the of North Dormer had been into a farm-waggon, over the to Hepburn, put into a way-train and to Nettleton.
In the of that day Charity Royall had, for the and only time, railway-travel, looked into shops with plate-glass fronts, pie, sat in a theatre, and to a saying pictures that she would have looking at if his had not her from them. This had her that North Dormer was a small place, and in her a thirst for that her position as of the village library had failed to excite. For a month or two she and into the of the Hatchard Memorial Library; then the of Nettleton to fade, and she it to take North Dormer as the of the than to go on reading.
The of the once more memories of Nettleton, and North Dormer to its size. As she looked up and it, from lawyer Royall's red house at one end to the white church at the other, she took its measure. There it lay, a weather-beaten village of the hills, of men, left by railway, trolley, telegraph, and all the that link life to life in modern communities. It had no shops, no theatres, no lectures, no “business block”; only a church that was opened every other Sunday if the of the permitted, and a library for which no new books had been for twenty years, and where the old ones on the shelves. Yet Charity Royall had always been told that she ought to it a that her had been in North Dormer. She that, to the place she had come from, North Dormer all the of the most civilization. Everyone in the village had told her so since she had been there as a child. Even old Miss Hatchard had said to her, on a terrible occasion in her life: “My child, you must to that it was Mr. Royall who you from the Mountain.”
She had been “brought from the Mountain”; from the that its above the of Eagle Range, making a of to the valley. The Mountain was a good fifteen miles away, but it rose so from the that it almost to its over North Dormer. And it was like a great the clouds and them in across the valley. If ever, in the purest sky, there a of over North Dormer, it to the Mountain as a ship to a whirlpool, and was among the rocks, up and multiplied, to over the village in rain and darkness.
Charity was not very clear about the Mountain; but she it was a place, and a to have come from, and that, her in North Dormer, she ought, as Miss Hatchard had once her, to that she had been from there, and her and be thankful. She looked up at the Mountain, of these things, and as to be thankful. But the of the man in at Miss Hatchard's gate had the of the of Nettleton, and she of her old sun-hat, and of North Dormer, and aware of Annabel Balch of Springfield, opening her off on than the of Nettleton.
“How I everything!” she said again.
Half way the she stopped at a weak-hinged gate. Passing through it, she walked a path to a little temple with white supporting a on which was in gold letters: “The Honorius Hatchard Memorial Library, 1832.”
Honorius Hatchard had been old Miss Hatchard's great-uncle; though she would have the phrase, and put forward, as her only to distinction, the that she was his great-niece. For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the nineteenth century, had a celebrity. As the marble in the of the library its visitors, he had marked gifts, a series of papers called “The Recluse of Eagle Range,” the of Washington Irving and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and been cut off in his flower by a in Italy. Such had been the link North Dormer and literature, a link by the of the where Charity Royall, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, sat at her under a of the author, and if he any in his than she did in his library.
Entering her prison-house with a step she took off her hat, it on a plaster of Minerva, opened the shutters, out to see if there were any eggs in the swallow's above one of the windows, and finally, seating herself the desk, out a roll of and a hook. She was not an expert workwoman, and it had taken her many to make the half-yard of narrow which she about the of a copy of “The Lamplighter.” But there was no other way of any to her blouse, and since Ally Hawes, the girl in the village, had herself in church with about the shoulders, Charity's had faster. She the lace, the into a loop, and to the with brows.
Suddenly the door opened, and she had her she that the man she had going in at the Hatchard gate had entered the library.
Without taking any notice of her he to move slowly about the long vault-like room, his hands his back, his short-sighted up and the of bindings. At length he the and her.
“Have you a card-catalogue?” he asked in a voice; and the of the question her to her work.
“A WHAT?”
“Why, you know——” He off, and she that he was looking at her for the time, having apparently, on his entrance, her in his short-sighted survey as part of the of the library.
The that, in her, he the of his remark, did not her attention, and she looked and smiled. He also.
“No, I don't you do know,” he himself. “In fact, it would be almost a pity——”
She she a in his tone, and asked sharply: “Why?”
“Because it's so much pleasanter, in a small library like this, to about by one's self—with the help of the librarian.”
He added the last phrase so that she was mollified, and with a sigh: “I'm I can't help you much.”
“Why?” he questioned in his turn; and she that there weren't many books anyhow, and that she'd read any of them. “The are at them,” she added gloomily.
“Are they? That's a pity, for I see there are some good ones.” He to have in their conversation, and away again, her. His her, and she up her work, not to offer him the least assistance. Apparently he did not need it, for he a long time with his to her, down, one after another, the tall cob-webby from a shelf.
“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed; and looking up she saw that he had out his and was the of the book in his hand. The action her as an on her of the books, and she said irritably: “It's not my fault if they're dirty.”
He around and looked at her with interest. “Ah—then you're not the librarian?”
“Of I am; but I can't all these books. Besides, nobody looks at them, now Miss Hatchard's too to come round.”
“No, I not.” He the book he had been wiping, and her in silence. She if Miss Hatchard had sent him to into the way the library was looked after, and the her resentment. “I saw you going into her house just now, didn't I?” she asked, with the New England of the proper name. She was to out why he was about among her books.
“Miss Hatchard's house? Yes—she's my and I'm there,” the man answered; adding, as if to a visible distrust: “My name is Harney—Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me.”
“No, she hasn't,” said Charity, she have said: “Yes, she has.”
“Oh, well——” said Miss Hatchard's with a laugh; and after another pause, which it to Charity that her answer had not been encouraging, he remarked: “You don't on architecture.”
Her was complete: the more she to appear to him the more his became. He her of the who had “explained” the pictures at Nettleton, and the weight of her settled on her again like a pall.
“I mean, I can't see that you have any books on the old houses about here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn't been much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My cousin's house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past—it must have been more of a place once.” He stopped short, with the of a man who himself, and he has been voluble. “I'm an architect, you see, and I'm up old houses in these parts.”
She stared. “Old houses? Everything's old in North Dormer, isn't it? The are, anyhow.”
He laughed, and away again.
“Haven't you any of a history of the place? I think there was one about 1840: a book or about its settlement,” he presently said from the end of the room.
She pressed her against her lip and pondered. There was such a work, she knew: “North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle County.” She had a special against it it was a book that was always either off the or and if one it in volumes. She remembered, the last time she had it up, how anyone have taken the trouble to a book about North Dormer and its neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She them all, of houses in the of the ridges: Dormer, where North Dormer for its apples; Creston River, where there used to be a paper-mill, and its by the stream; and Hamblin, where the always fell. Such were their titles to fame.
She got up and to move about the shelves. But she had no idea where she had last put the book, and something told her that it was going to play her its and invisible. It was not one of her lucky days.
“I it's somewhere,” she said, to prove her zeal; but she spoke without conviction, and that her none.
“Oh, well——” he said again. She he was going, and more than to the book.
“It will be for next time,” he added; and up the he had on the he it to her. “By the way, a little air and sun would do this good; it's valuable.”
He gave her a and smile, and passed out.
