Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/26

 CHAPTER II

Mrs. Parlin Testifies

In addition to the ill-fated lawyer, there were but three people in the Parlin household—the widow; a general house girl, Mary Mullin; and the hired man, Jonathan Oldbeg, a nephew of the Mullin woman. Oldbeg was about thirty, and his aunt forty. The widow's room was in the northwest corner of the second floor, while that of the Mullin woman was over the kitchen. The hired man slept over the woodshed. All the windows of the three rooms gave to the north, excepting two in Mrs. Parlin's room, which opened to the west, overlooking the orchard and the river.

Mrs. Parlin was a tall, striking woman who carried her head, crowned with waves of white hair, with an air that some named queenly, and others by that terrible New England word "conceited." The death of her husband had been a terrible blow to her soaring ambitions; but this she had outlived, at least