Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/49

 John the Shepherd, or Dionysus, and sweeping on, said, "I used to see her sometimes, but I never cared for her. She had a proud way of walking, like a cat, and she gave herself airs, as if she was better than other people. In the end that was what made other people hate her. The congregation of her brother's church took a great dislike to her because she would never join in church work and never went to call on any of them. I don't suppose there was anybody in the town who in all the years she lived in Winnebago Falls had a dozen words with her. Nobody ever knew anything about her. They just took her for granted after a time. It was the black goat that first began to make trouble."

From somewhere, perhaps from some Irish family living near the railroad in Winnebago Falls, the old maid acquired a black he-goat to add to her pets. There was no reason, said Mrs. Weatherby, why a goat should seem a pet more strange than a dog except that the human race has always had a curious feeling about goats, and in Winnebago Falls this feeling turned to comment and indignation at the sight of an old maid walking through the streets with a goat by her side. For she developed the habit of taking the goat at dusk each evening to the outskirts of the town to feed on the thick sweet clover that grew by the county road.

"It was a queer thing to do," observed Mrs. Weatherby. "And in small towns, of course, everything gets to be known and people aren't as tolerant as, well . . . we are in a place like Brinoë."

This remark she accompanied by a sweeping gesture in the direction of the distant city, as if she