Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/46

 always Congregationalists. That is one of the reasons why I never really knew Miss Annie Spragg. She was a Primitive Methodist and kept house for her brother, who was much older than herself and a Primitive Methodist preacher. But the Primitive Methodists were an insignificant lot and mostly poor whites from the Kentucky mountains."

At this point Father d'Astier, speaking English with all the elegance of one who knows a foreign tongue perfectly, interrupted to ask exactly what was a poor white. He listened with great interest while she explained and when it was made clear she said, "Of course, Miss Fosdick knew Miss Spragg better than myself. There were reasons for that."

She made clear the reasons. Miss Fosdick's mother had been a girl friend of Mrs. Weatherby. They had gone to school together and been married on the same day, but from that moment their courses had diverged, for Mrs. Weatherby's husband had gone up in the world and Mrs. Fosdick's had slipped steadily down into poverty. With poverty social obscurity came to her old school friend and Mrs. Fosdick's daughter, who now sat plump and on the verge of middle age in the Villa Leonardo, had been forced to do the best she could. Thus she had come into contact with individuals in Winnebago Falls whom Mrs. Weatherby knew only distantly if at all. Among these individuals was Miss Spragg.

"But I never forgot that Emma Fosdick had always been my friend," continued Mrs. Weatherby, "and I did all I could for her daughter Gertrude."

She indicated her companion with the gesture of