Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/133

Rh unshaded street, Mrs. Bassett carefully lifting her alpaca skirts, Garth trudging earnestly beside her, trailing his shoes in the dusty grass at the edge of the road. The hill was not easy for either of them to climb, and they proceeded slowly, talking most amiably.

"I don't think I've ever been inside your house," Garth said, as Mrs. Bassett clicked open the white gate and stopped to twine an escaped spray of honeysuckle back among the fence-palings.

"That's what I was thinkin'," she assented. "I thought 't was about time you come, seein' we known each other in passin' so long. You come right in here, whilst I take off my bunnit, an' then we'll go in the parlor an' look at some cur'ous things."

When she had removed the bonnet and straightened her dress, she led the way through the "settin'-room" and unlocked the door of the front parlor. It was very dark there, for the blinds were closed, so dark that Garth, newly come from the glaring white road, caught only a glint here and there from shapes in the gloom. There was a strange, composite smell of matting and old, imprisoned upholstery, and something spicy, too, and rare.