“Mr. Lansing is over at the unction sale at Abiron Ranger’s,” said Temperance. “You’ll excuse me, my jell’s a-waitin’ for me, and whatever time other folks has to waste I’ve none! You’ll excuse me! I know nothing about boarders and sich!”
“Boarders,” said Sidney in alarm, looking about for signs of the enemy. “Do you take boarders?”
“It would seem so now,” said Temperance, cuttingly. “It would sertingly seem so.”
“Oh, bless you!” said Sidney. “I’m not a boarder! I’m a visitor. There’s a great difference, isn’t there? I’m the son of old Sidney Martin, the county clerk who went away to Boston and married there. You have heard of him, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have,” said Temperance, throwing one end of her apron over her head to shield off the sun. “Yes, I have, though I was in short petticoats and my hair in a pig-tail when it happened. He went to Bosting and married rich, didn’t he?”
“He married in Boston,” said Sidney. “Where is Mr. Ranger’s?”
“Abiron Ranger lives two miles down the road, across to the right,” said Temperance. “He died a week ago Wednesday, and there’s an unction sale there to-day. There’s goin’ to be a divide up. The widow wants her thirds. A very pushin’ woman Mis’ Ranger is.”
“Two miles more,” said Sidney, with something like a sigh.
Miss Tribbey’s keen eyes noted that he was white as from recent illness.
“Won’t you set down a spell and hev’ a glass of milk?” she asked; “set down in the shade there, and I’ll get it in a jiffy. What’s the sense of standing in a blazing sun like this?”
She whisked off and presently returned with the milk and a plate of New England cookies.
“I’ve got to go back to my jell,” she said. “When you get ready to go just put the things on the porch. My soul! I was took when you began talking about boarders. For I’ve said, and said often, ‘If boarders comes, I go.’ But visitors! We’ve always heaps of company, and I’ll go bail no house I do for’ll ever be took short of things to put on the table; the most unexpectedest company that ever drove up that avenue was always set down to a liberal table; when you go down the road about a mile, just look towards the right, and you’ll see a brown frame-house, with a lightning-rod on it. That’s Abiron Ranger’s. Cut across the fields. It’s shorter.”