The morning was gusty, with a coldly blue and cloudless sky. Olive, reaching the top of Orange Street, was whipped with dust, her hoops flattened grotesquely against her body. The town fell away on either hand, lying in a half moon on its harbor. The latter, as blue and bright as the sky, was formed by the rocky arm of Cottar's Neck, thrust out into the sea and bent from right to left. Most of the fishing fleet showed their bare spars at the wharves, but one, a minute fleck of white canvas, was beating her way through the Narrows. She wondered, descending, if it were Jem coming home.
Olive was going to the Burrages'; it was possible that they had had a later letter than hers from Jason. It might be he would arrive that very day. She was conscious of her heart throbbing slightly at this possibility, but from a complexity of emotions which still left her uneasy if faintly exhilarated. She crossed the courthouse square, where she saw that the green grass had become brown, apparently over night, and turned into Marlboro Street. Here the houses were more recent than the Staneses'; they were four square, with a full second story--a series of detached white blocks with flat porticoes--each set behind a wood fence in a lawn with flower borders or twisted and tree-like lilacs.
She entered the Burrage dwelling without the formality of knocking; and, familiar with the household, passed directly through a narrow, darkened hall, on which all the doors were closed, to the dining room and kitchen beyond. As she had known he would be, Hazzard Burrage was seated with his feet, in lamb's wool slippers, thrust under the stove. For the rest, but lacking his coat, he was formally and completely dressed; his corded throat was folded in a formal black stock, a watch chain and seal hung across his waistcoat. Mrs. Burrage was occupied in lining a cupboard with fresh shelf paper with a cut lace border. She was a small woman, with quick exact movements and an impatient utterance; but her husband was slow--a man who deliberately studied the world with a deep-set gaze.
"I thought you might have heard," Olive stated directly, on the edge of a painted split-hickory chair. They hadn't, Mrs. Burrage informed her: "I expect he'll just come walking in. That's the way he always did things, and I guess California, or anywhere else, won't change him to notice it. And when he does," she continued, "he's going to be put out with Hazzard. I told you Jason sent us three thousand dollars to get the front of the house fixed up. He said he didn't want to find his father sitting in the kitchen when he got back. Jason said we were to burn three or four stoves all at once. But he won't, and that's all there is to it. Why, he just put the money in the bank and there it lies. I read him the parable about the talents, but it didn't stir him an inch."