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Everywhere, the inmates of the simple, clean little houses, had begun early to furbish them up for the use of their summer boarders, while they got ready the shanties behind them for their own occupancy; but everywhere Northwick was received with that pathetic deference which the poor render to those capable of bettering their condition.
"I wish I were!" said Northwick, with a heavy sigh. "But I can't yet." "This is a desert for you," Père Étienne pressed on. "I can see that. I have seen how solitary you are." "Yes. It's lonesome," Northwick admitted.
A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him, he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the morning, and I still have some things to put in shape."
He has 'em about once in every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband." "I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go ahead of him, well, not in this town," said the husband. "Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes him so down on Mr. Northwick?"
I suppose there wasn't a man among them that wouldn't have trusted Northwick with all he had, or wouldn't have felt that his fortune was made if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In fact I heard some of them saying so before their deference for me shut their mouths. Yet I haven't a doubt they all think he's an absconding defaulter."
His pleasure was not marred by the fact that he knew nothing of the state of Northwick's family, and built his assertion upon the probability that the letter would contain nothing to alarm or afflict him, "Like a glass of water?" he suggested, seeing Northwick sit inert and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, apparently without the force to break the seal of the letter. "Or a little brandy?"
It made Northwick think of a bell-buoy off a ledge of rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He wished to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves would not let him stop; he had to keep tolling. Northwick started. He must be going out of his mind, or else he was drowsing. Perhaps he was freezing, and this was the beginning of the death drowse.
"Don't you think, Annie, we'd better refer him to Mr. Peck? I should like to hear Mr. Brandreth and Mr. Peek discussing it. I must tell Jack about it. I might get him to ask Sue Northwick, and get her ideas." "Has Mr. Wilmington known the Northwicks long?" Annie asked. "He used to go to their Boston house when he was at Harvard."
They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided motive.
As soon as he stepped out on the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man. "I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you, anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, 'Lectra." Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word.
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