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"He's eating dried herrings and cheese!" repeated Pickering, nearly skipping out of bed. "Why, wasn't he dead when we brought him out?" "No, only stunned. There, do get back," said Ben, pushing Pickering well under the blankets again, "the doctor says on no account are you to get up until he came. Do keep still; he'll be here presently," with a glance at Mrs. Higby's chimney clock.
Cabot tell me everything she knows," said Polly hoarsely, and not looking back; "she shall let me have every syllable. It can't be true!" She threw wide the door of Mrs. Higby's "keeping-room" where that lady was engaged in putting a patch on the chintz-covered sofa, and talking gossip with a neighbor at the same time. "I thought as this was a-going so fast, Mr.
Polly, not caring where she went, but with the words she must speak weighing heavily on her mind, followed him unsteadily into the parlor, and while he threw open a blind or two to light up the gloom that usually hung over Mrs. Higby's best room, she busied herself trying to think how she should begin. "There, now, my dear," said Mr.
Higby, ambling toward the door, "I ain't a mite busy, Miss Polly; that old patch can wait. La! I can tell Mr. Higby to set on the other end till I get time to attend to it. What was it, Miss Polly?" Polly turned back, Mrs. Higby's tone was so full of entreaty. "Oh, nothing, only if it isn't too much trouble, would you ask Mrs. Cabot to come down stairs a moment, I want to see her."
Higby's carryall, shut in on the back seat looking out over Johnny's head, with a pair of very hopeless eyes. But her lips said, "Do, Polly!" And still Polly, on the flat door-stone, had to shake her head. "I shall tell Mrs. Fisher, and beg her to come right down here," determined Charlotte Chatterton to herself, "just as soon as I get in the house.
Farmer Higby's neat kitchen a half-hour later, with torn garments and muddy shoes, "they got home while you were away, and that tiresome Mr. Loughead came a little before them; and he made Polly go to walk with him; actually made her!" Mrs. Cabot leaned her jeweled hands on Mrs. Higby's spotless pine table, and regarded him in great distress.
Seems's if Providence was in it. Gracious, see that man running here! I hope there ain't anything else happened!" and with her old flutter upon her, Mrs. Higby turned to meet a young man advancing to the door-stone, with more speed than was ordinarily exhibited by the natives of Brierly. "Is this Mr. Jotham Higby's house?" asked the stranger.
It was so like Joel's invitation to "Come on and have it out now," that not a single man of them stirred. "Then I will have the pleasure of bidding you good-by," said Mr. King, and the next moment he was outside of No. 23, while perfect silence reigned within. Polly came slowly down Mrs. Higby's front stairs and looked at Phronsie standing at the further end of the entry.
Higby's spare-room ottomans, on which that lady had worked a remarkable cat in blue worsted reposing on a bit of green sward, "to think that everybody is getting on so well," and she hugged her lame arm rapturously. "Hem hem! I should say so," breathed old Mr. Loughead, regarding her closely. "Where have they buried that woman?" he demanded suddenly. Polly started.
Bryce hurried forward; then brought his head up quickly, a peculiar light in the sharp eyes back of the spectacles. "He is sleeping!" Polly was sitting, a half-hour by the bedside, Pickering's thin fingers still tightly grasping her hand. They had made her comfortable in an easy chair, Jasper bringing one of Mrs. Higby's biggest cushions for her to lean her head against.
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