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"I got a letter from my niece Sophrony, out in Iowa, yesterday, and she sent me a cuttin' from an old paper. It's somethin' awful!" "Is it?" "Yes, and it's about Walter Sherwood!" continued Mrs. Simpkins, triumphantly. "He hasn't met with an accident, has he?" inquired Nancy, turning pale. "It's wuss than that!" answered the widow, nodding her head ominously. "Worse than an accident?"
The woman's eyes were a shallow brown color perhaps "faded" would be a better expression. It seemed as though she were too languid even to look with attention at any one or anything. "This is the girl, Sophrony," Miss Peckham repeated more sharply. "Oh, yes," murmured the strange woman, as though awakened from a brown study. "Yes. Quite a pretty little girl."
Day," said the faded-out lady, simpering. "I've been considerin' acceptin' a position such as you have. Of course, I ain't used to working out " "Oh, fiddlesticks? put in Miss Peckham, "He don't care nothin' about that, Sophrony. He can see you ain't no common servant." "Assuredly I can see that, Mrs. Watkins," said Mr. Day, suavely.
But I've come to no great age, Marthy Peckham, I'd have you know!" "Oh, bosh, Sophrony!" ejaculated Miss Peckham. "Well, as I say, Mr. Day, Mrs. Watkins is a widow, and she needs a settled place." "Just what are you trying to get at, Miss Peckham? I don't understand you," asked Mr. Day, his face actually getting rather pale.
"Ah um well Ananias, perhaps," he said, and walked away. Zach and Miss Cash stared after him. Of course, it was the latter who spoke first. "Ananias!" she repeated. "Why, Ananias was the feller that that lied so and was struck down dead. I remember him in Sunday school. Him and his wife Sophrony. Seems to me 'twas Sophrony; it might have been Maria, though. But, anyhow, they died lyin'."
She did not understand why she was being taken into Miss Peckham's confidence. "Yes, Sophrony Watkins and I Sophrony Shepley was her maiden name. She married Tom Watkins and Tom was a shiftless critter, if there ever was one." Janice was startled. Miss Peckham seemed to be unnecessarily plain spoken. But the languid Mrs. Watkins made no comment.
"And now Sophrony has come down to doin' for herself," went on the neighborhood censor. "I sent for her to come over here. She's been livin' in Marietteville. You tell your pa that we'll come into see him to-night after supper." "Oh!" murmured Janice. Then she "remembered her manners," and said, smiling: "Please do, Miss Peckham. I will tell daddy you are coming."
She shrieked in a most ear-piercing tone: "There it is! I know Janice Day did that! Don't talk to me! She's the plague of the neighborhood. No wonder Sophrony couldn't stand it here. Bringing bears into the house!" "Oh! Oh, Miss Peckham! I never!" cried Janice. "Don't deny it.
Why, Sophronia Smalley actually would have draped the presiding officer's desk MY desk with a blue flag with a white whale on it, if I hadn't been there to stop her." "Well, I Why, Serena, you know Sophrony thinks a sight of that flag. Simeon Smalley, her father, was in the whalin' trade for years, and that flag was his private signal. She always has that flag up somewhere."
The way we got into the hotel business in the first place come around like this: Me and Cap'n Jonadab went down to Wellmouth Port one day 'long in March to look at some property he'd had left him. Jonadab's Aunt Sophrony had moved kind of sudden from that village to Beulah Land they're a good ways apart, too and Cap'n Jonadab had come in for the old farm, he being the only near relative.
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