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In the cobwebbed parlour, meanwhile, Doctor Ralph was in the hands of the attorney for the prosecution, who questioned him ceaselessly. "What's wrong with Minty?" "Broken ankle." "How did it happen to get broke?" demanded Miss Hitty, with harshness. "I never knew an ankle to get broke by falling off a ladder." "Any ankle will break," temporised Dr. Ralph, "if it is hurt at the right point."
So she lived to find herself immured in this damp and crumbling house, with no society but a drinking and crime-haunted husband, and the ignorant negroes who served him, society varied now and then by one or two men revolting enough in speech and aspect to drive Hitty to her own room, where, in a creaking chair, she rocked monotonously back and forth, watching the snapping fire, and dreaming dreams of a past that seemed now but a visionary paradise.
Miss Hitty reached down among the newspapers with accustomed fingers and drew out a crumpled wad, tightly wedged into one corner of the box. She listened carefully at the door, but there was no step in the house. She was absolutely alone. None the less, she bolted the door of the attic before she picked the crumpled paper apart, and took out the key of the trunk.
Thorpe, "and even if I fell off of a ladder again, it might not hurt me at all. I have fallen from lots of places and only got black and blue. I never broke before." "Listen, child," said Ralph. "Would you rather live with Aunt Hitty, or with me?" "Why, Doctor Ralph! Of course I'd rather live with you, but Aunt Hitty would never let me!" "We're not talking about Aunt Hitty now.
Age is not counted by years, nor calculated from one's birth; it is a fact of wear and work, altogether unconnected with the calendar. I have seen a girl of sixteen older than you are at forty. I have known others disgrace themselves at sixty-five by liking to play with children and eat sugar-plums! One kind of youth still remained to Hitty Hyde, the freshness of inexperience.
"Good-day! good-day!" said he to his son's wife, in a squeaking, tremulous tone, that drove the child to his mother's arms, "Abner to home?" "No, Sir," said Hitty, with an involuntary shudder, that did not escape the bleared blue eye that fixed its watery gaze upon her. "Cold, a'n't ye? Better go in, better go in! Come, come along! How d'e do, little feller? don't know yer grandper, hey?"
It was dusk at the White Farm, and a late supper was spread upon the hospitable board. The children had eaten their bread and milk, and were out in the barn with Jabe, watching the milking. Aunt Hitty was in a cheerful mood as she reflected on her day's achievements. Out of Dr. Jonathan Cummins' old cape coat she had carved a pair of brief trousers and a vest for Timothy; out of Mrs.
"He has a kind of way," Hitty conceded, "but I ain't one o' them kind o' women that hankers much for the society of a man that's once shown himself to be more of a sneak than the average." "I don't think that I am, either," Nancy said gravely.
I think I'll take you with me to the Inn to-day. You might melt and trickle away if I left you alone here with Hitty." "Quelle joie! I mean, how nice that will be! Then I can talk about Paris to Gaspard, and he will give me some baba, with a soupçon of maraschine in the sauce, if you will tell him that I may, Miss Dear." "I'll think about it."
"Lots of things are worse than broken ankles," he assured her. "Has it been so bad to be shut up here, away from Aunt Hitty?" "No," said the truthful Araminta. "I have always been with Aunt Hitty, and it seems queer, but very nice. Someway, I feel as if I had grown up." "Has Miss Evelina been good to you?" "Oh, so good," returned Araminta, gratefully. "Why?"
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