Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/341

 The interview had ended in an agreement from her, after a struggle with the two passions of her life, to give up the tulip bulbs for which she had been saving so long, and spend the money for repairing the roof. Miss Molly, having no money to give, since she was already much poorer than she could possibly be and live, agreed, according to Miss Abigail's peremptory suggestion, to give her time, and keep the library open at least during the afternoons.

"You can do it, Molly, as well as not, for you don't seem to have half the sewing you used to."

There's nobody here any more to sew for" began the seamstress despairingly, but Miss Abigail would not listen, bundling her out of the garden gate and sending her trotting home, cheered unreasonably by the old woman's jovial blustering, "No such kind of talk allowed in my garden!"

But now, after the second warning, Miss Abigail felt the need of some cheer for herself as she toiled among the hollyhocks and larkspurs. She would not let herself think of the significance of the visit of the agent for the chairs, and she could not force herself to think of anything else. For several wretched weeks she hung in this limbo. Then, one morning as she stood gazing at her Speciosums Rubrums without seeing them, she received her summons to the front. She had a call from her neighbor, Mr. Edward Horton, whom the rest of the world knows as a sculptor, but whom Miss Abigail esteemed only because of his orthodox ideas on rose culture. He came in to ask some information about a blight on his Red Ramblers, although after Miss Abigail had finished her strong