The peculiarity of her voice and manner, of which I have spoken, that made all her words sweet and gentle, however unconventional they might be, left me unoffended.
"Perhaps you are right;" I said, "yet I wish you would try my way." She did not make any reply, and I left her standing with downcast eyes by the door.
Mrs. Libby still sat sewing by the window when I returned. "Have a pleasant time?" she asked, a gleam of curiosity in her cold eyes. "Seems to me you didn't stay long."
"See that queer room of hers? Folks ain't asked into it much. They said she took the minister right in there when he called. Kitchen table piled up with books, 'n papers, books 'round on the floor, 'n' a mattress a-layin' in a corner. Some of the boys peeked in one day when she was down to the beach, 'n' told all 'round how it looked. And a white shoe onto the wall. I expect it must be one o' hers she used to wear. It was before I moved over from South side, but Mrs. Hikes says she had the flightiest clothes when he was courtin' her. Her mother left her some money, I guess, any way, 'n' there wasn't anything too rich, ner too good, ner too foreign for her to wear. 'N' look at her now! Well, it's 'long toward tea-time. You look tired."
I was indeed very tired. I could not assimilate the strange impressions I had received. That night the moon-light streamed broadly into my window through the apple-boughs that showed black shadows on the floor. About midnight I opened my eyes suddenly. Mrs. Libby in a much-frilled night-dress was shaking my shoulder vigorously.
"You'll have to get up. Agnes Rayne's dyin', 'n' she's took a notion to see you. They've sent Hikeses' boy after you; bleedin' at the lungs is all I can get out of him. The Hikeses are all dumb as a stick of cord-wood."
She sat down heavily on my bed, and put a pillow comfortably to her back while I dressed. Hikeses' boy sat waiting for me in the porch whistling under his breath. He was the tallest and lankiest of them all, and like some ghostly cicerone, he never spoke, but led the way through the dewy grass into the white, glorious moonlight, and kept a few yards ahead of me in the dusty road until we reached the Rayne farmhouse.
Through the windows I saw a dim light, and figures moving. I pushed open the door without knocking. A doctor, young and alert, had been summoned from the village, and the dull light from a kerosene lamp, set hastily on the table, touched his curly red hair as he knelt by the mattress. An old white-bearded man sat huddled in one of the shadowy corners, weeping the tears of senility, and a tall, dust-colored woman, whom I rightly took to be Mrs. Hikes, stood stolidly watching the doctor. Outside the crickets were singing cheerily in the wet grass.
