want
anything from the village, Joel Blake gets it, if he doesn't forget.
Ditto wood, ditto everything except meat. Some other hick brings that
along when he has 'killed.' They can only see one house from the front
yard, and that is precisely a mile away by the road. Joel Blake lives
nearer, but you can't see his house. You can't see anything--except the
woods and the 'crick' and the mountains. You can see the farmers when
they are haying, but that doesn't last long."

"Is it a beautiful view?"

"My dear man, don't ask me what a beautiful view is. My education was
neglected."

"Does Kathleen Somers think it beautiful?"

"She never looks at it, I believe. The place is all run down, and she
sits and wonders when the wall-paper will drop off. At least, that is
what she talks about, when she talks at all. That, and whether Joel
Blake will remember to bring the groceries. The two women never speak to
each other. Kathleen's awfully polite, but--well, you can't blame her.
And I was there in the spring. What it will be in the winter!--But
Kathleen can hardly last so long, I should think."

"Who is the other woman?"

"An heirloom. Melora Meigs. _Miss_ Meigs, if you please. You know Mr.
Somers's aunt lived to an extreme old age in the place. Miss Meigs 'did'
for her. And since then she has been living on there. No one wanted the
house--the poor Somerses!--and she was used to it. She's an old thing
herself, and of course she hasn't the nerves of a sloth. Now she 'does'
for Kathleen. Of course later there'll have to be a nurse again.
Kathleen mustn't die with only Melora Meigs. I'm not sure, either, that
Melora will last. She all crooked over with rheumatism."

That was the gist of what I got out of Mildred Thurston. Letters to Miss
Somers elicited no real response--only a line to say that she wasn't
strong enough to write. None of her other female friends could get any
encouragement to visit her. It was perhaps due to Miss Thurston's
mimicry of Melora Meigs--she made quite a "stunt" of it--that none of
them pushed the matter beyond the first rebuff.

By summer-time I began to get worried myself. Perhaps I was a little
worried, vicariously, for Withrow. Remember that I thought he cared for
her. Miss Thurston's pity for Kathleen Somers was the kind that shuts
the door on the pitied person. If she had thought Kathleen Somers had a
future, she wouldn't have been so kind. I may give it to you as my
private opinion that Mildr