Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ Can't you have the Ives girl come over, the way you did before?”
“I can manage my own affairs, thank you,” said Ada.
Sylvester Noble turned pale. He looked at her as if he could not believe his ears. “It isn't quite safe for you to be here all alone nights,” he went on with piteous eagerness, “when there isn't anybody in my house. Mr. White's is quite a way off.”
Ada looked at him. Then she thought of the other girl, the one he had married, and he looked changed to her. “I'm entirely capable of looking after my own business,” said she in a hard voice. ”

“ She went out seldom. She had one girl friend, whom she used to visit now and then, running in of an afternoon with her work. She lived quite near, and her name was Ellen Ives. She was a plain, silent girl.
It was spring when Ada came to enjoy her legacy. She worked in her garden a good deal. She hired a man to plant vegetables, then she weeded and tended them, and made a flower garden for herself. The box-border of Angeline's old flower garden still remained, outlining vigorously the heart and diamond shaped beds, where the pinks and marigolds used to grow. ”

“ People saw no harm in Noble, so they inclined to the latter view. Ada always heard him called “love-cracked” without much consideration. Now she coupled this idea with her theory of Angeline, and another wonder and pity sprang up in her heart. She thought about him as she moved around her little house, and she talked him over with Ellen.
“Do you suppose the girl he was in love with is dead?” asked she.
But Ellen knew no more than she. All any one knew was that Sylvester Noble was about forty years old ”

“ They deceived him all the time. She made believe to think everything of Sylvester, when all the while it was his brother. And when he found it out he just gave his brother all his share of their father's property and came away here. He settled the money on the girl, so she wouldn't suffer. He knew his brother couldn't support her, for he'd lost most of his own money —”
“So there wasn't a word of it true,” said Ada slowly. She stared across at Noble's deserted house. After Ellen had gone she went over there, plunging through the high, damp tangle of green things in the yard. ”

“ I guess a good many men hate to own up if they're beat. I know most of 'em I've had anything to do with did. Edward was jest so, if he was my son. He was jest like his father, poor boy.”
Mrs. Lambert was mopping the kitchen floor with unsteady vigor. Her old arms trembled weakly, but she gave them no rest. Her broad, wrinkled face lagged loosely about the cheeks, her small black eyes were alert behind her spectacles.
“Say, grandma,” said the girl at the sink. Some blushes rose softly on her pretty cheeks. “I — wanted to ask you — what was it about Angeline Laurence and — my father?” ”

“ Brown's team comin' down the road. You just run out and ask him who the bell tolled for.”
Oliver Lambert limped slowly out of the yard and waylaid the man on the approaching team. When he returned he went hastily past the house in the direction of the barn.
“Oliver, Oliver!” his wife called after him. “Who did he say 'twas?”
Oliver made no reply. He hurried along as if he did not hear.
“It's Angeline fast enough,” his wife told Ada. “That's the way he always acts when he finds out he's got the worst of anything. He's took awful hard of hearin' all of a sudden.” ”

“ They'd make over real nice for you, some time. There ain't no use savin' such things for the moths to eat up.”
But Angeline's clothes hung undisturbed in her closets, and her dainty store of linen lay folded in her bureau, in spite of Mrs. Lambert's protests. Ada would not have them touched. She was glad, in her heart, that the house could not be rented and stood vacant for the next two years. At the end of that time her grandparents died within a month of each other, and Ada sold the lonely farm and went to live in her little village house. ”

“ I didn't have much schooling — father was all for saving money — but I've picked up some knowledge. I know a little about stones and plants, and I write about 'em, and they pay me something, and that's the way I keep soul and body together. ”

“ An' did you look in them bureau drawers?”
“I couldn't bear to,” said Ada, and she fell to crying.
Her grandmother looked wonderingly at her. “Of course it makes anybody feel bad. Poor Angeline,” said she. “But it's what we all have to come to. Things has to be left, an' the livin' has to make use of 'em. There's a real good black silk in the front chamber closet, an' a nice brown woolen. ”