THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK

BY W. D. HOWELLS



THE LADY OF THE AROOSTOOK




I.


In the best room of a farm-house on the skirts of a village in the
hills of Northern Massachusetts, there sat one morning in August
three people who were not strangers to the house, but who had
apparently assembled in the parlor as the place most in accord with
an unaccustomed finery in their dress. One was an elderly woman with a
plain, honest face, as kindly in expression as she could be perfectly
sure she felt, and no more; she rocked herself softly in the haircloth
arm-chair, and addressed as father the old man who sat at one end of
the table between the windows, and drubbed noiselessly upon it with
his stubbed fingers, while his lips, puckered to a whistle, emitted
no sound. His face had that distinctly fresh-shaven effect which once
a week is the advantage of shaving no oftener: here and there, in the
deeper wrinkles, a frosty stubble had escaped the razor. He wore an
old-fashioned, low black satin stock, over the top of which the linen
of his unstarched collar contrived with difficulty to make itself
seen; his high-crowned, lead-colored straw hat lay on the table before